


Bullseye

by Everylark, papofglencoe



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Older Woman/Younger Man, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-05-21 23:02:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 44,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6061435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everylark/pseuds/Everylark, https://archiveofourown.org/users/papofglencoe/pseuds/papofglencoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Katniss Everdeen finds herself stocking up on Midol and tampons at her local Target, the last person she expects to check her out is Peeta Mellark. </p><p>An age gap!Everlark love story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The "Real" Target!Peeta

**Author's Note:**

> This is an ongoing group drabble previously known (on tumblr) as Target!Everlark; written by DandelionSunset, Everylark, and papofglencoe. Each author writes her installment individually and with no knowledge of what material she will receive until the previous author has posted hers. Also, since this is a drabble, the material is unbetaed and appears, warts and all, as the author originally posted it. You can find us on tumblr as dandelion-sunset, everlylark, and papofglencoe. 
> 
> The first chapter is a transcript of how the drabble began (as a series of correspondences among bloggers). Every subsequent chapter is each author's contribution.

DandelionSunset: "You know... you’re obsessed with Peeta when you go to [the] checkout and the cashier is… the perfect headcanon of him: stocky build, blue-eyed, blond wavy hair, very sweet, with an easy smile, and your mind is screaming ‘PEETA’… but you have to keep a straight face and try not to seem like a complete weirdo…"

yourmockingjaymistress: I think the question we all want answered is did you get the cashier's number or not?

DandelionSunset: Haha, no… I’m 30, and he looked to be in his late teens/early 20s. Plus, I’d be very surprised if he didn’t have a girlfriend. I’ll probably be in need of random groceries a lot more often from now on, though lol.

papofglencoe: You guys are actually in the process of writing fanfic rn. Lol. Age gap!everlark, guysssssss…..

DandelionSunset: LOL! My mind is now running with story ideas featuring cashier!Peeta and an older Katniss who keeps coming to the store to buy random things just to talk to him at checkout.

papofglencoe: And then there’s the one time she has to buy tampons, and she’s mortified when he calls her over to his register to check her out. 

everlylark: Once she gets to the check out with her tampons and Midol, he so kindly slides a peanut butter cup across the counter “free of charge.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by papofglencoe

He flushes a violent shade of pink, a color that could only be described as Hello Kitty fuchsia or My Little Pony magenta, and claws uncomfortably at the back of his neck, unsure if he’s taken their flirtation one step too far this time. He watches her as she pockets the candy, refusing to meet his eyes. _Well, the damage has been done_ , he considers and so, before he can change his mind, he splutters out an unbroken string of words, “Doyouthinkmaybeyou’dwanttogoout….” Her steel gray eyes lock on his, and he hates the look of contrition he can see there, the rejection lurking behind them. The excuses. A thousand excuses. He’s too young. Too…. indentured. Too inexperienced. A stupid kid. He grabs the bag, staring forlornly at the box of tampons and pain meds, and the thought occurs to him that maybe it’s not that she doesn’t _like_ him.

Maybe it’s just not a good time.

He adds hopefully, “… _Next week_?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by Everylark (tumblr: everlylark)

The hopeful tilt in his voice at the end of his question reminds her of his youth. And probably his stamina. Internally she groans at how instantly her thoughts go to how long he’d last between the sheets. Probably longer than 2 pump Gale. God, her hormones were out of whack. Quickly she’s snapped out of her thoughts by a clearing throat. She looks up at him and his hopeful puppy dog eyes. “Sure.” She finds herself saying as she hastily scribbles her number in the back of the receipt. “Text me. And bring more chocolate.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by papofglencoe

She’s ugly crying for poor Miles Mikel Archer when the first text comes through, the bugling tone causing her to toss her Kindle aside like she’d just been busted looking at porn (which, let’s face it, she sort of had been).

She doesn’t recognize the number, but her stomach gallops anxiously at the message. Because of course she knows who it is.

_(314) 143-1212: What r u doing?_

A second later another text comes through.

_(314) 143-1212: It’s Peeta_

She can’t help the monumentally ridiculous smile that finds its way on her face. She hadn’t pegged Peeta for a guy who’d skimp on his vowels.

She wonders what else she hadn’t pegged him for.

_Katniss: From my local Super Target?_

He replies immediately.

_Peeta: Bullseye ;_ )

She casts a furtive glance at her Kindle and considers admitting to Peeta that she’d been reading maudlin romance novels and weeping over fictitious characters but decides immediately that’s a terrible idea. She should lie and tell him she’s binge-watching _Breaking Bad_ or reruns of _Friends_. Or whatever it is that kids are watching these days (fuck if she knows).

_Katniss: I’m just doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. All involving peanut butter cups, of course. :) How about you?_

The next time he replies, she can’t help but notice he’s remembered how to spell. Something about that makes her smirk.

_Peeta: I bet you are watching The Notebook. Am I right?_

Katniss laughs aloud to herself. The little shit. Actually, now that he’s mentioned it, The Notebook sounds like just the thing. She’s considering how to reply when she receives another message from him.

_Peeta: Want some company?_

She glances down at her ratty UCONN sweatpants, the same pair she’d purchased her freshman year of college and diligently wears every month when Aunt Flo is at her bitchiest. The pair she’d probably bought about the time Peeta hit puberty. Today, they sport a fluorescent orange smudge down the right thigh from the Nacho Cheese Doritos she’d been railroading one after another. Tugging at her outsize sweatshirt, she considers her tragic appearance. But she can’t help it. Some feeling has found purchase within her gut, battling for dominance over her vise-like cramps. Something hopeful and needful. No matter how hot of mess she looks, she wants company.

Or his company, anyway.

He can’t know how badly she wants that.

_Katniss: Do you need to clear it with your parents first? ;)_

She cringes, hoping he doesn’t mind her poking at their age difference. She’s teasing, mostly, but some part of her seriously worries that an angry mother-lead, pitchforked, PTAesque mob will find their way to her front door if she does with Peeta half of what she’d like to do.

He answers without pause or elaboration.

_Peeta: Hardly_

The word lodges itself deep within her, somewhere that feels profane, and she shifts uncomfortably on the couch.

Since when was an adverb a turn on?

She hasn’t replied yet when her phone begins to ring. Marimba. The same tone she uses for her morning alarm. It’s also Gale’s ring tone, and she’s not sure if it’s the association to waking up in the morning or Gale’s face that makes her wince. Holding the phone in her hand, she stares at it ominously, feeling hunted.

She hits “ignore,” her mind made up.

_Katniss: Then sure_

Her heart hammers in her chest as she waits for his response.

He doesn’t keep her waiting.

_Peeta: Where do you live?_

She releases a long, shaky breath and forces her hand to hold steady as she types out her address.

_Peeta: I’ll be there in fifteen._

She grins, loving how eager he sounds to spend time with her. She’s got a good ten years on him. She’s on the rag. Her face is a splotchy, awful wreck (she really should warn him about that, she realizes).

But Peeta wants to keep her company. She wonders about the things Peeta might want and hopes, with a pang of shame, that it isn’t just a string of BFF movie nights.

Another message comes through, and it makes her grin threaten to sunder her face to the four corners.

It makes her want to make dying whale noises and collapse on the floor.

_Peeta: It would be ten, but I’m gonna pick up some ice cream first._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by papofglencoe

She opens her door to the angel of death.

At least that’s how Peeta looks, his smooth, pale skin standing in stark relief to his clothes. Black Chuck Taylors. Black skinny jeans. A black slim-fit t-shirt. A black denim jacket. She’d never stopped to consider before what Peeta would choose to wear outside of work. Naively, she’d assumed he was as preppy as his work uniform; boyish and sweet and excessively well-adjusted, he seems- or _seemed_ , anyway- like the kind of guy who wears khakis and red polos and aprons that say “Hi! My name is Peeta M.” for fun.

She hadn’t expected the tortured artist type.

But as Peeta stands there on her front porch, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he waits to be invited inside, Katniss is forced to reconsider what she thinks she knows about him.

She’s forced to consider that maybe she doesn’t really know him at all.

Katniss’ eyes make the slow crawl up his form, taking a slight detour to check out the pint of ice cream he clutches in his right hand: Ben and Jerry’s Cinnamon Buns. Her favorite, for fuck’s sake. What were the odds of _that_? When she finally looks at his face, he’s smiling at her mischievously.

“Don’t you look cozy,” he chuckles.

“Shut up,” Katniss scowls, laughing despite herself. By the way he’s looking at her, _devouring_ her, she wishes she’d at least bothered to put on a bra. Nothing about the way he is looking at her suggests that this is a BFF movie night.

He flushes, looking as pleased as he always does whenever he manages to make her laugh, and holds out a disc as a mock peace offering. “Here, I brought one of my favorite movies.”

It’s a burned disc that reads in a neat, slanted hand “ _The Proposal_.”

It’s one of Katniss’ favorites, too, and not just because her buddy Sandy Bullock has a decade+ on Ryan Reynolds. Although that certainly helps. “Great choice. Thank you.” She nods in approval and gestures for Peeta to follow her inside.

In the narrow foyer he feels so close to her, so _proximate_ , she covertly leans a hand against the wall to steady herself. She doesn’t know how to name it, this effect that seeing him, being _near_ him, has on her.

Peeta shuts the door behind him and kicks off his shoes, not so much following her into the kitchen as sauntering like he owns the place. Without asking, he starts rummaging through the drawers, looking for spoons. Wordlessly, Katniss points to the drawer next to the dishwasher.

 _This should be weird_ , she thinks. _Why isn’t this weird_?

It’s probably because Peeta already knows the contents of her cupboards. Her favorite brands of cereal. The type of coffee she drinks. The fact that she’ll have an obscene number of canned green beans and carrots in her pantry (but not corn, never corn).

Maybe it’s her disastrously imbalanced hormones or the fact that Peeta _starts-with-an-M_ is standing in her kitchen looking like her new favorite flavor of ice cream, but she feels hot. Too hot.

She tries to be suave as she opens the fridge, tries not to fan the door for better ventilation or to lean too far in. Grabbing a bottle of Stella, she asks him, pretending like everything doesn’t depend on his answer, “Did you want a beer?”

He clear his throat nervously, the sound making her look up at him in alarm.

This is it. The moment of truth.

He runs a hand through his wavy hair, a stubborn lock remaining firmly upright in its wake. “I- ah- shouldn’t.”

Her voice isn’t much more than a whisper. And maybe it’s because it feels like he has subsumed the world, that he is the world in its entirety, but all she can seem to remember is two syllables. “Peeta?”

He blows out a long breath of air, and from where she stands a couple feet away she can smell his chewing gum. It’s sharp artificial cinnamon flavoring fills the small kitchen.

“I mean, I _drink_ ,” he explains to her.

It’s no explanation at all.

Katniss gawks stupidly at the bottle in her hand, trying to piece together exactly what it is he’s not saying.

“It’s just that I have to drive,” he offers, lamely.

They both know it’s a piss-poor explanation, that he’s only just arrived and that he won’t be leaving anytime soon. Not for hours. (Maybe not ever, a small part of her girlishly hopes).

He blurts it out.

The truth could be worse. But it’s not great.

“I’m 20,” he tells her. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

There are plenty of things she can think of, suddenly, that qualify as _not-good_ ideas.

Katniss can’t look at him yet. She needs a moment to process what it means: although he is legal in one sense of the word, the crucial sense, he’s still not old enough to drink legally.

The bottle opener is stowed in the drawer next to where he stands, leaning against the countertop. She moves up to him, opening the drawer. Still completely unable to meet his blue eyes that she knows are silently asking her _is that okay? Is this okay?_ , she fumbles with the bottle opener and hopes he doesn’t notice her shaking hands.

“I’m 30,” she offers, her voice low. The information is a gift he didn’t ask for.

But it’s something he needs to hear.

“I know,” he replies, his voice lower.

Her eyes meet his, then, needing to see him. She needs to see the man whose voice talks to her like _that_.

His eyes look dark and stormy in the dim light of the kitchen. But his face is cloudless and sunny. He looks young and carefree, and if he looks slightly cocky it’s only because the pain of adulthood hasn’t touched him yet. He reaches out without looking, taking the bottle and opener from her hand. He pops it open and takes a long swig from the bottle before handing it to her.

The way he drinks promises her nothing but trouble.

“I saw your ID when I carded you,” he tells her.

It had been months ago. So long she had completely forgotten. He hadn’t carded her since.

The whole time he remembered. He knew.

And she wants to know what else he has noticed about her.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by Everylark (tumblr: everlylark)
> 
> This chapter and the next are in past tense. The rest of the story is in present; we have decided to keep the tenses as they were originally posted.

Peeta noticed the way she always scrunched her nose up once the total came up on the screen . He noticed how she always purchased the largest box of chamomile tea they carried. He noticed the way her hips swayed as she walked away from the register, and how her braid weaved down the back of her head. 

He noticed the smell of her perfume as she walked away. 

He noticed everything. 

“So should we….” As he gestured toward the coach. Katniss moved to sit on one end, while Peeta took the other. She reached out for the remote and cued up Netflix. 

“A movie? A show? What are you in the mood for?” Katniss looked over at his face. He may be only 20 but she could read clearly in his eyes exactly what he was in the mood for. The question was loaded as it hung in the air between them. She watched as he slowly licked his lips and met her eyes. 

“Whatever you want.” Katniss wasn’t sure what she wanted was something she should be doing. His blue eyes and his pink perfect lips mocked her though. They looked incredibly kissable and she wanted to know if they tasted like the cinnamon she could smell between them. 

“Uh-uh-how about Scrubs? Have you seen it?” Katniss went for something light hearted and funny. She didn’t think she could watch anything with him that even remotely hinted at sex. Her mind was already in overdrive and she couldn’t imagine how much worse it would get having to watch someone else get laid. She looked over at him for approval. He was positioned in the corner of the loveseat at a slight angle. His arm was thrown over the back with his legs propped up on the coffee table. The way he was positioned made a perfect little nook for her to crawl into and snuggle. She had to physically stop herself from doing just that. 

“Sure, that sounds great. Zach Braff is hilarious.” Katniss was pleased he at least knew who was in Scrubs seeing as it went off the air when he was 14. Fourteen. She reached over for the remote and started it up. As the show went on, she found herself watching him more than Dr. Reid’s neurosis. The way his pale eyelashes framed his big blue eyes, the freckles that sprinkled across his nose, and the barest hint of stubble that spread across his jaw. The jaw. She wanted to lick her way around that jaw. Just then they made eye contact. Katniss quickly turned to the TV and felt the flush come up her neck and face. He started to sit up and she thought that she had crossed a line, and he was leaving. 

Instead, he reached over and pulled her close. She tucked herself into that perfect nook and breathed deeply. He smelled like man. Musky, handsome man. She was screwed.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by papofglencoe
> 
> This chapter is also in the past tense; the story reverts to present tense in the next chapter and (probably?) stays that way. <3

Not _literally_ screwed, mind you. (Although lord knows she could use a literal screwing). It had been… a while… since she’d let Half-hard Hawthorne anywhere near her, but not for lack of trying on his part. Their relationship had become an ugly, twisted mess of hard feelings and bitter words, of failed expectations and broken promises. And was it really worth fighting to salvage something like that? In the past year he’d attempted to start things back up with her on numerous occasions, calling her with increasing frequency, showing up unannounced at her apartment.

He’d almost worn her down.

And then Peeta happened.

Peeta showed up the following night, too, a robust knock on the front door announcing his arrival. It sounded so much more confident than the night before.

“Come in. It’s unlocked,” Katniss called from the couch, still feeling too achy and sluggish to want to move.

She could hear Peeta kicking off his shoes, the groaning of the wooden floorboards under the weight of his heavy tread, the careless rummaging of utensils as he ferreted out spoons. Her heart thundered, pounded, drummed a relentless tattoo, as she waited for his form to clear the corner and come into view.

He was dressed all in black again.

But this time he was wearing sweatpants.

She smirked and pointed to them, appreciating the low sling of the fabric on his hips, how the hem of his t-shirt just managed to kiss the waistband. “You look cozy.”

A flush creeped its way up his throat and dappled his freckled cheeks. He rocked on the balls of his feet at her words. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was sheepish she had noticed he’d dressed down on her account. But something about it- his ready willingness to follow her lead- made a jolt of desire course through her.

Then she thought about how he made himself at home, never questioning his right or place to be there, and she couldn’t help but consider that there would be limits to his pliability.

She wanted to test those limits, to know more about the silent pattern of push-and-pull they’d seamlessly fallen into. All of it. She wanted all of it. From him. With him.

“I figured when in Rome, right?” he chuckled, sinking down on the couch so close to her that she could feel the heat of his body radiating from his hips into hers. Peeta kicked his feet up onto the coffee table, leaned back, and threw his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close to his body. His thumb traced a circular pattern on her shoulder, comforting her, lulling her. His free hand clutched a fresh pint of ice cream and two nestled spoons.

They spent hour after delicious hour together like that, curled up on the couch. Snacking, laughing, flirting, caressing each other with affectionate, not-quite-chaste touches.

Katniss didn’t know when she fell asleep. When she woke up in the early hours of the morning, feeling lighter and happier than she had in years, Peeta was gone.

He’d placed a throw over her before he left, tucking the blanket around her sleeping form. She thought about his fingers grazing her body over the fabric and buried her face into the couch cushion to conceal her smile from the empty room.

************

Lather, rinse, repeat.

That’s the way to describe the pattern they’d fallen into in a matter of days. Katniss would sit on her couch, reading her Kindle, waiting for Peeta’s text.

He’d text. Then show up bearing gifts, usually of the frozen yogurt variety. They’d snuggle on the couch. It was all very domestic and _boyfriendly_.

But Aunt Flo had fucked off, and what Katniss wanted from Peeta at this point went a little beyond comfort and companionship.

She got the impression he might be waiting for her to make a move. No matter how many times she allowed herself to get caught staring at him, or how close to his crotch she’d allow her arm to rest, he hadn’t so much as kissed her. The tease.

Tonight that was going to change.

On the TV Andrew was panting and sweaty, and by god he’d just asked Margaret to marry him so that he could date her, when Katniss finally turned to face Peeta. She raised herself onto her knees, leaning toward him so swiftly he didn’t have time to react. Her right hand fell on top of his arm, still resting along the back of the couch, to brace herself. The hairs on his forearm felt soft to the touch, his skin pebbling with goosebumps at the press of her hand. Her left hand cupped his face, drawing it to hers. She didn’t give herself time to think or second guess it.

She crushed her lips against his greedily. There was nothing hesitant or gentle about the way she kissed him. It was a claiming, a staking.

She was starving, and Peeta would feed her.

One of his hands wrapped around her waist, pulling her onto his lap. It was a bold move; through the cotton of their pants, Katniss could feel the press of his cock against her as he swelled beneath her weight. God, it felt right. It felt so good.

She bit his lower lip, eliciting a sharp gasp from Peeta. He groaned, his hips bucking upward involuntarily.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” he moaned against her mouth.

“God, no,” Katniss whispered, swallowing his words, winding her hands through his hair, tugging and pulling, as she began to rock and grind against him. “Don’t be.”

At her words Peeta’s tongue began to plunder her, licking along the seam of her lips, memorizing every part of her mouth his tongue could reach. His kiss demanded that he know her, taste her, own her, be known by her.

Katniss’ hands fell to his shoulders, broad and muscular beneath the fabric of his shirt. Her fingers clamped down sharply, even sharper as his fingers dug into her hipbones, anchoring there. She ground relentlessly against him, her hips rocking in a steady, punishing rhythm.

She hadn’t dry humped since high school. She’d forgotten how absolutely delicious and agonizing the friction could be.

He was panting and moaning. Or maybe it was her. Or maybe it was the both of them, lost together in the moment.

“We should stop,” he warned her. His fingers held her so tightly, his hands rooted to her, refusing to explore.

But there was no stopping, none at all. She had to keep going. Was greedy for it. Needed it. Took it. Seized it.

She came with a startled gasp, and as Peeta watched her eyes squeeze shut, riding out her waves of pleasure, he came too. The expression on his face might have been one of ecstasy, but it looked more like that of a man who’d just been tortured.

“Goddammit,” he moaned, pressing his forehead to hers in frustration. “God fucking dammit.” Before she could comprehend what had happened, she was unceremoniously deposited back onto the couch, and Peeta had left the room.

She called out for him, but he didn’t answer. She could hear the gentle whooshing of the bathroom door as it closed behind him, the clicking of the lock, the running of water from the tap.

What had just happened?

“Peeta?” Her tone was beseeching now, worried. She walked up to the bathroom door and gently knocked, her fingertips drumming a light pattern against the wood. “Peeta, are you okay?”

He didn’t answer.

“I mean.. are you upset? Did I do something wrong?”

Silence.

Then she could hear a heavy sigh. He opened the door, and her heart fell at the sight.

He looked wrecked. Crestfallen. Shattered.

She’d made him look like that. Fuck, was she an awful person? Had she taken advantage of him? What sort of demonic Mrs. Robinson she-beast was she? She was a monster.

“I’m so sorry,” she begged him, the words falling so short of their mark she was ashamed of herself.

Peeta frowned at her words, uncomprehending. “For what?” The lines creasing his forehead were deep chasms, like jagged valleys marring a peaceful landscape.

She hated that she was responsible for creating those.

“I shouldn’t have… I made a faulty assumption…”

He ran a hand through his hair. Again, one stubborn lock remained upright as if to say ‘fuck you very much, Katniss Everdeen.’

“What ‘faulty assumption’ do you think you made?” His blue eyes weren’t defeated anymore. If Katniss had to describe them, she’d probably call them pissed off. Perhaps a shade closer to royally pissed off.

“That you wanted…” she began, looking down at her feet so that she could finish the hateful sentence, “for us to have… _that_ sort of relationship.”

Her eyes darted back up to meet his as his hand gripped her shoulder. “Katniss,” he explained, his voice exaggeratedly patient and slow, commanding her to understand him. “I just jizzed in my pants like a goddamn virgin. How could you think I wouldn’t want to have sex with you?” He gestured vaguely to his groin to point out that he was wearing an extraneous bodily fluid. “How could you not know the effect you have? That’s ridiculous.”

She was so taken aback by his bluntness she didn’t know how to begin processing the information. But it did answer one of her questions: _not a virgin_.

He pressed on. “It’s embarrassing, all right? I mean, I’m not saying I’m a sex god or anything, but I’ve never had stamina problems before with any of the girls I’ve been with.”

Okay, so not even close to being a virgin.

It made her wonder if, despite her ten year advantage, she was the more virginal of the two. She was going to press the issue since- hey!- apparently the night had turned awkward, when a sound came wafting from the living room.

Marimba.

Marimba.

Marimba.

 _Gale_.

Her face paled at the sound, and she rushed into the other room to silence the call. She couldn’t bear to hear the tone another second longer.

Marimba.

Marimba.

Peeta followed her into the living room, standing silently behind her as she pressed “ignore.”

“Why don’t you take the call?” he asked, an edge of suspicion to his voice. And, okay, fine. Her reaction had given him enough justification to warrant that.

The truth was always best, so Katniss responded truthfully, but carefully. “Because that was Gale, and I don’t want to talk to him.”

He didn’t ask why a guy named Gale was calling at 2 am. Or why her face paled at the sound of his ringtone. Or why she wouldn’t answer in front of him.

She didn’t think she wanted him to ask her those questions, but at the same time she wanted him to try.

Peeta sighed heavily. “Forget it, Katniss. It’s fine.”

He didn’t sound fine. He sounded decidedly _not fine_.

“Look, I’m gonna take off, okay? Tonight got sorta fucked, but I’ll touch base with you tomorrow.”

She nodded her head, wanting to kiss him again and to ask him to stay, but maybe he was right and it was best to call it a night.

They walked down the hall in silence, Katniss watching Peeta put on his shoes carefully and diligently. As awkward as things were at the moment, she couldn’t help but smile as he double-knotted his shoelaces.

She was still smiling when he stood up and finally looked at her.

“What?” he asked, but there was no confrontation to his tone. He looked almost amused, almost like his usual self.

“Nothing,” she said, her smile deepening.

Because this beautiful man might just be 20. He might be boyish and sweet and perfectly capable of coming in his pants, but he was mature enough to know when to walk away from a fight.

And he wanted to fuck her.

Just then, there was a sharp knock at the door. Katniss knew what that knock meant. It was an impatient, demanding knock. A 2 am-I’ve-been-drinking-with-Thom-and-Bristel-and-I-really-fucking-miss-Katniss-kind of knock.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Peeta asked, his voice husky.

She nodded, unable to meet his eyes. Annoyance ran through her veins. That Gale thought he had the right to show up. That Gale insisted on chasing her. That Gale might chase away the one good thing in her life.

“See you soon,” Peeta shrugs, planting a light kiss on her cheek.

It sort of felt like a kiss goodbye. It was the approximation of a kiss- it had none of the heat or warmth that Katniss had come to associate with Peeta. She wanted to ask him to take it back.

When Peeta opened the door, he came face to face with Gale. It was like the light meeting the dark, the optimism of youth meeting the cynicism of experience.

Gale took one glance at Peeta and then locked his eyes on her. They were red-rimmed and blood shot. Their cold gray depths burned with an icy heat. They promised war.

“Well isn’t that nice, Catnip?” he slurred, going in for the kill. “The Girl Scouts came by to sell you some cookies.”

If she were Peeta she’d punch Gale Hawthorne right in the face. If she had Peeta’s build, strength, and size, she wouldn’t have thought twice.

But instead Peeta looked at her as he brushed past Gale, ignoring the older man altogether. “You deserve so much better than that, Katniss.”

Peeta didn’t call her the next day. Or the next.

She hadn’t heard from Peeta in five days.

So she made up her mind. It was time to do some grocery shopping.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by DandelionSunset (tumblr: dandelion-sunset)

She tells herself she’s not a stalker, that she has as much right to be here as anyone else. This was her main shopping spot long before Peeta began working here, and it’s not as if he owns the damn place. Still, as she observes him from a distance, checking to see if the coast is clear to make her approach, she can’t help feeling like a predator stalking its prey.

For the last month or so, she’d been buying groceries on a day-to-day basis just so she could talk to him. Now, she’s stocking up for at least a few weeks. It kills two birds with one stone: they’ll have plenty of time to discuss why he’s been ignoring her, and if it turns out to be totally awkward and horrible, she won’t have to come back for a while.

Dread courses through her at what he might say, though. A million explanations run through her mind. She came on too strong. He thinks she’s a bad kisser. It suddenly hit him just how much older she is. He found someone his own age. Perhaps he’s embarrassed about jizzing his pants. Or maybe it was Gale showing up and being an ass. She has a strong feeling it has something to do with the latter.

She watches from behind a display as he gives change back to an elderly woman and asks if she needs help to her car. His dazzling, carefree grin causes her breath to catch in her chest. She didn’t expect him to be sobbing at his register, but he also doesn’t seem heartbroken at all. It makes her wonder if she built this up to be more than what it really is, that maybe she’s just another girl he visits casually on a list of many and he finally got bored of her.

Whatever the reason, she’s determined to get to the bottom of it.

Taking a deep breath, she gathers her courage and proceeds to his lane, her cart brimming with groceries.

She places a few items on the conveyer before any words are exchanged. When she finally looks up at him, catching his eye, she notices that his easygoing smile has disappeared entirely. Instead, his brows are furrowed and he looks like an animal trapped in a corner. He usually greets her with the warmest of smiles and the sweetest of words. Now, she can almost feel the temperature drop from his icy disposition.

“Hey,” she finally says, forcing a smile and trying to appear as if she hasn’t been thinking of him every second this week. He nods and gives a small grunt in reply, avoiding her eyes as he begins ringing her groceries up at lightning speed. She chews on her lip for a moment before blurting what’s on her mind, “So… you haven’t texted in a while.”

“Neither have you,” he mumbles, shrugging a shoulder.

“You usually text first,” Katniss points out.

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt you to do it once in a while,” Peeta counters, raising his eyebrows. He still refuses to look at her, though. “Besides, I thought you might be preoccupied.”

Her eyes narrow at his accusatory tone. "And what’s _that_ supposed to mean?“

He gives a heavy sigh as he finally meets her eyes. A second later, he averts them again and shakes his head. She can’t help feeling guilty, even if she has no idea what she did wrong.

“Do we have to talk about this here, right now? I’m working.”

“Yeah, I think we do. You’re obviously pissed about something, so spill it,” she replies, trying to keep her voice steady. “Is this about Gale?”

“Partly,” Peeta admits, his jaw tensing. He hesitates for a moment, as if debating whether or not he should elaborate further. “If you have a thing going on with him, you could have mentioned it.”

She snorts and shakes her head, her eyes widening at the ridiculousness of his statement.

“A _thing_? With Gale. Okay,” she begins heatedly. “First of all, he’s an ex. If there was _ever_ anything between us, it died a long time ago. And if you thought something was going on between us, you could’ve just asked instead of avoiding me.”

“I don’t do drama, Katniss,” he states, shrugging. She can tell that he’s hesitant to believe her, and it’s frustrating as hell. If there’s anyone causing drama here, it’s him.

“Neither do I, Peeta,” she retorts, mimicking his tone.

“If you were really over and done with him, you’d block his number or something,” he continues, his hands moving so fast there’s a constant string of beeps. “Or, I don’t know, maybe you’d tell him you have a boyfriend.”

Katniss stares at him in disbelief, reassessing him all over again. She never pegged Peeta as the jealous type. And since _when_ was he her boyfriend? They made out, sure, and they both admitted they wanted something more than friendship. But they never _once_ discussed the possibility of a relationship.

“If I blocked his number, he’d show up at my house anyway. But I will, if it makes you happy.” She rolls her eyes, unable to keep the irritation out of her voice. If only Peeta knew just how much of an earful Gale got on his behalf after he left. "And… why would I tell him you’re my boyfriend? We haven’t even talked about that. Besides, I didn’t think you’d want me to involve you. Gale’s an asshole.“

“Yeah, well, I can be too. When the situation calls for it,” he says.

As Katniss tries to figure out what he meant by that, he runs a hand through his hair and finally looks at her. Her heart quickens at the intensity and determination in his eyes. Whatever he’s going to say next, she has a feeling it’s not going to be something she wants to hear.

“Look, Katniss… I’m just going to get straight to the point,” he begins, stopping his hands to give her his full attention. The aloofness he had only a moment ago has dissipated into something else Katniss can’t quite pinpoint. All she knows is that some sort of mask has been lifted, revealing more vulnerability than she’s ever seen of him before. “I really like you, okay? You’re sexy as hell, and spending time with you has been amazing. But I need to know where you’re wanting to take this; if it’s ever going to leave your house. If you’re too embarrassed about the age thing, I think it’s best we go our separate ways. Because I’m not looking for friends with benefits.”

She nods, her mind searching for an adequate response. She can’t help feeling this is too much, too soon; she’s not ready for another relationship. Least of all with someone as young as he is, because she knows it’ll end with her heart being broken. He might think he wants her now, but it’s only a matter of time until someone much younger and a whole lot prettier catches his eye.

On the other hand, she remembers how it felt to be snuggled against his chest, his arms around her, cloaking her in his warmth. How comfortable it is to be near him, how easy her smiles come when he’s around. She can still feel the softness of his lips against hers, and recall how exhilarating it was to feel him hard between her legs as they moved together in perfect rhythm. Hell, he gave her an orgasm with all her clothes on. Gale couldn’t even manage that with her clothes off in the whole two years they were together.

Besides all that, she knows she’ll regret it if she passes this up.

Ready or not, come what may, her mind is made up.

“I’m not really looking for that, either. I just… I wasn’t sure if you wanted more than that,” Katniss finally says. He searches her face as he continues ringing items up. She clears her throat and stares down at his hands. “And I couldn’t care less what others think about our ages. What _does_ concern me is that you’re ten years younger than me, you could literally have any girl you wanted–”

“But I want you. Just you. But only if you want me, too,” he cuts her off before she can finish. The sincerity, the longing in the way he said it, makes all the annoyance she felt with him only minutes ago vanish in an instant. Now all she can focus on is the boyish blush of his cheeks and how much she wants to kiss him senseless. He turns to read the total on the register screen, not seeing the small smile that has curved her lips. “Your total is $223.58.”

“I do, you know,” she replies quietly, giving a shrug as she slides her debit card. “Want you, too.”

When her eyes flit up to meet his again, she sees the familiar flirtatious smirk she’s grown to adore so much. The one she likes to believe is only reserved for her. She didn’t realize until now just how much she’d missed it.

“So, do you want me to bring some ice cream over after my shift?”

She shakes her head, the smile taking over her face as relief washes over her like summer rain.

“No. I have that covered. The only sweet thing I need tonight is you,” she replies softly, caressing her thumb over the top of his hand as she takes her receipt.

“I’ll see you a little after nine then?” he asks, raising his eyebrows hopefully.

“Okay,” she nods. “I look forward to it.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by Everylark (tumblr: everlylark)

The loud knock on the door comes at exactly 9:15pm. Katniss quickly straightens out her long tunic and adjusts her leggings. After deciding that it would in fact be a bit too much to greet him at the door in just the sunset orange bralette and thong set, she chose something that would be casual while not looking like she had tried too hard. She took careful steps towards the door, again trying to balance being excited and being incredibly desperate. She swung open the large door and was met with a casually dressed Peeta. She licks her lips at the sight of the blond curls sticking out the sides of the baseball cap. The black zip up hoodie and matching sweatpants made him look like he stepped right off the pages of a magazine. 

He was so ridiculously hot. In his hands he was also holding 2 large Target bags. 

“I told you not to bring anything but yourself.” Katniss spoke quietly. She really planned on not having long conversation. She wants his clothes off and him naked in her bed. Preferably 5 minutes ago.

“Well, since we’ve decided to try this I thought we should get to know each other a bit.” He looks down at her and places the bags on the counter. His hands are now free to wrap around her waist. He places a careful kiss to the crown of her head. “You want all of me correct? I’m not reading this wrong?” 

“No, I do. I want all of you.” Katniss lifts up on her tip toes to kiss his nose. “Preferably soon.” She quietly speaks under her breathe in a slightly aggravated tone. Peeta raises an eyebrow to let her know that he heard her. Her faces turns up into a scowl. “Well, what did you bring? How will I get to know you through things in a Target bag?” Katniss tried really hard to tamp down her sexual frustration. 

Peeta turns to the counter and starts pulling things out of the red target bags. Katniss is baffled by the amount of cooking supplies he is arranging. She sees flour and some kind of cheese. 

“Back home my family runs a bakery. I worked there up until I left for college. I thought as a way to show you a bit of me, we could bake something together.” Just then Katniss’s stomach let out a low growl. “I think your stomach agrees that its a good idea.” His blue eyes then turn a bit stormy. “Let’s make cheese buns together and then I promise, we’ll do whatever you want.”

Katniss’s scowl then turns into a smile. “Whatever I want baker boy?” She suggestively raises her eyebrows. “However I want?” She begins to imagine seeing those blonde curls between her thighs. Grabbing the front of his sweatshirt she brings him down for a searing kiss. This kiss is filled with a promise for more. 

“Whatever and however. You bake with me, I’m 100% yours when we are done.” Katniss then rolls up her sleeves and starts towards the kitchen. 

“You are on. Also, cheese buns? I need to know more about this.” Peeta lets out a hearty laugh. 

“I had a feeling you’d be down for cheese buns.” He winks at her from across the kitchen. 

They settle into the kitchen as Peeta directs Katniss as to what he needs. They pass flour and eggs back and forth and Katniss comes to the realization that while she isn’t an excellent cook, she is an excellent helper. They talk back and forth about their childhoods. He tells her all about the bakery and she finds out he has two older brothers still at home. Surprising even herself, she launches into an explanation about her little sister Prim and how she is a doctor in the city. Peeta then explains that he needs to knead the dough before it bakes. As she watches Peeta knead the dough back and forth her eyes focus directly on his hands. His long fingers work magic with the dough, and she is rocked by the strength they hold. She begins to drift off thinking about him using those hands on her breasts, on her thighs, on her….

“Katniss, are you ok in there?” Katniss snaps her attention back to Peeta who has finished kneading the dough. She looks at his face noticing how gorgeous he still looks even streaked in flour. “You were squirming in your seat a bit.” He gives Katniss a knowing smirk which causes a blush to rise to her face. He reaches over to caress her face. “You have a bit of flour on your face.” He gently removes the flour on her face. The moment is so intense that she can feel the tension between them loud and clear. 

“You have a bit on yours as well.” She startles him when she leans across the kitchen and gently drags her tongue across his jaw line. She then lets out a large sigh. “God, I’ve wanted to do that forever.” 

Peeta then licks his finger and sticks it into the sugar bag. He comes around the corner of the counter and drags his sugared finger down the length of her neck. “Oh look, you have some sugar right here.” He traces the line of sugar with his tongue. The moan Katniss lets out is something feral. Something so pent up that it just spurs Peeta on. “The dough needs to rise. Any ideas on how we can pass the time?” 

Katniss leans over and starts to unzip his sweatshirt. “I’m sure I can think of a few things.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by papofglencoe

Peeta shows up at her front door with the noblest of intentions— getting to know everything and anything he can about Katniss Everdeen— but the minute the door swings open and he sees her standing there in that curve-hugging green dress _thing_ she’d put on for him, all he can think about is how she’d taste if she let him go down on her, whether he could make her squirm and gasp and come completely fucking undone with his face buried between her thighs.

He’d be lying if he said it was the first time he’d wondered that.

Shaking his head to rid himself of the thought before it finds its way from his brain to his pants, he takes the lead and directs her into the kitchen to embark on his grand experiment.

Within seconds, he’s thankful he’s picked a recipe he could prepare in his sleep, because he can’t keep his attention on baking to save his life. His hands move by muscle memory, his eyes darting and fingers pointing to each of the ingredients he needs. The two of them fall into a synchronized rhythm, Katniss gliding around him as she brings him ingredients and attempts to tidy up after them. He can’t resist doing it, but occasionally he scatters flour when she isn’t looking. Every time she notices a new spill, she gets this adorable frown on her face, these two little worry lines right on the top of the bridge of her nose, that Peeta can’t get enough of. He wants her to notice he’s spilling the flour on purpose— and tons of it, frankly, in places that make no sense at all— but she’s never seen him bake before and obviously doesn’t bake much herself.

Maybe she’ll catch him next time.

Her scowls, frowns, smiles... the way her face looks as promising and sweet as a sunrise when she sleeps: he knows he’s going to love every face that Katniss Everdeen makes.

Even if there are a few he hasn’t seen—

Yet.

At one point her left breast brushes lightly against the back of his arm, and just like it does every time, her touch makes him break out in goosebumps. He swallows a groan and the urge to clear the counter with one deft swipe so that he can plant her on it and rid of her that wonderfully impractical dress. The one she’d put on for him to take off.

He’s mesmerized by the way she’s opening up to him, chatting with him comfortably about her family and her job and interests. Tonight her long, dark hair hangs loosely around her shoulders, and as she leans over the counter toward him, animatedly talking and gesturing with her delicate hands, it threatens to skim the dough. It becomes another game for him, watching her hair cascading around her, wondering what it will touch without her noticing. He wants it to touch everything.

He wants to be jealous of everything that Katniss’ hair touches.

In the months since they’d met, he’d never known her to be the chatty type. A nervous lip biter, yes. A fidgeter and question dodger, definitely. He thought he knew her voice, thought he’d heard her speak. Until tonight. There are shades of it, bright hues and somber shadows, he’d never noticed before.

He hadn’t known how greedy he’d been to hear her voice, how starving he’d been for it— the way it invades and conquers him and levels him while making him whole.

Fuck, he’s a goner.

He reaches over and swipes a streak of flour off her face, but it has nothing to do with errant ingredients and everything to do with errant fingers. She leans over in response and licks him. _She goddamn licks him_. She drags her tongue along his jaw, and just like that his cock throbs for her, selfishly asking for her.

She pulls back and locks her mercury gray eyes on him, her breaths escaping in shallow, tiny pants. “God, I’ve wanted to do that forever,” she tells him. Except, as she says it, it sounds like a confession that she’s whispered to herself. As the words fall from her lips they pierce his chest like an arrow.

No. _Now_ he’s a goner.

The bread can go to hell.

He’d been with other girls, but the second Katniss’ tongue laves his skin he can’t recall a single one. Not their names, not their faces.

It was always Katniss.

It was always going to be Katniss.

It’s Katniss.

He licks his finger slowly, deliberately, and dips it into the bag of sugar. He paints her with it, drawing a line down the column of her throat, from the delicate skin behind her ear to her collarbone.

His hand falls to her breast, skimming her nipple lightly through the fabric of her soon-to-be-discarded dress, while he licks her from her clavicle up to where the line of sugar began. Peeta’s mouth latches onto the spot behind her ear, and the skin is so soft, so warm, he sucks on it hard, trying to draw it into his mouth to taste her sweetness.

She moans— a guttural, feral sound that makes him twitch and itch and ache to climb inside her.

They’re talking. They might be talking. They’re not talking. He doesn’t know or care, because now her hands are on his sweatshirt, and she’s clawing at the fabric of his shirt.

The apartment is deafeningly quiet, filled with the soft, wet, cloying sounds of their mouths pressing and pushing against each other’s flesh. Peeta hears the whisking sound of his sweatshirt hitting the floor, the way Katniss moans into his mouth when his hands skate over her body like two relentless explorers eager to claim each inch of land for themselves. It’s so loud in the room he can’t hear himself think.

He wants— he wants to know everything about Katniss Everdeen.

He learns she’s an impatient lover.

“Your fucking shirt,” she grouses, yanking it upward, her hands making their way beneath the fabric to feel his bare skin. Quickly, before his hands miss her, he lifts his arms and tears off his shirt. His hands feels so cold without touching her. So they touch her, winding themselves into her long, luxurious raven hair and pulling, pulling just hard enough to make her gasp.

As her mouth opens in shock, his tongue plunges inside, rubbing against hers tenderly as if he were contrite.

But he isn’t.

Her fingers are cold on his nipples, icy as they dip to the skin of his abdomen, arctic as they plunge beneath his waistband to his cock.

“Oh my god,” they moan in unison. His moan is one of pure joy, of sublime and total incan _fucking_ descent bliss. Katniss’ hand is wrapped around him, her smooth skin tracing the sensitive skin of his shaft.

Her moan sounds a little closer to distress.

“You’re thick,” she groans, trying to wrap her small hand around him and failing. “You’re gonna kill me.” Her hand glides back up his stomach, and she presses her forehead against his, their lips falling apart from each other. They stand there for several seconds, catching their breath.

Peeta stares at her lips, admiring how plump and swollen they look from being thoroughly kissed by him— _I did that_ , he thinks— and lets her words sink in.

He frowns as his brain catches up to him. “You think I’m going to hurt you?” he asks her, sounding as injured as he feels.

She gives a rueful smile. “I know you’re gonna hurt me.”

She doesn’t elaborate and doesn’t need to. She could mean a hundred different things with those words. It occurs to Peeta that she might mean every possible one of them.

“I’d never hurt you,” he promises her, pulling her to his chest because, suddenly, he can’t bear to look at her. There’s something lurking in her eyes he doesn’t think she wants him to know yet. Or maybe ever.

Her words are muffled by his chest, the heat of her breath fanning itself against his flesh. Peeta closes his eyes and buries his face in the soft hair on the crown of her head as Katniss speaks. She doesn’t say much. “It always hurts.”

Shaking his head, he vows, “Not with me.”

He’s sure they’re not talking about sex anymore. He wonders if they ever were.

He can feel the press of her lips against his skin as she kisses him on each pec. It sends shivers throughout his body. It’s too almost too much— much more than he can handle. “It’s simple,” he tells her. “You’re going to have to trust me, Katniss.”

She squeezes him, her fingers so close to his spine they seem to touch every nerve in his back. “That’s asking a lot,” she says, pulling away to look up at him. “We barely know each other.”

He could keep talking, but he thinks he needs to show her instead. There’s telling, and then there’s doing.

His hands fall from her shoulders, down along her waist and to her hips. He grabs the bottom hem of her dress and lifts it upward slowly, as a question. Peeta’s eyes ask _is this what you want? Can I do this_?

She nods and lifts her arms above her head, waiting for the fabric to pass over her. There’s nothing coy or seductive about the way she waits for him. It’s vulnerable and trusting.

She’s putting herself in his hands.

He drops the dress on the ground, not bothering to see where it lands.

“I don’t even know what your favorite color is,” she tells him. He thinks it’s an explanation, a way for her to convey the gravity of the leap she’s making.

He gapes at her body— the smooth olive skin of her abdomen; the valley between her breasts, smattered with little moles that he imagines spell out his name because she must have been marked for him from birth; the soft swell of her breasts; the dusky skin of her nipples pressing against the fabric of her orange bra.

“Fuck if I know,” he replies, erasing the space between them in one stride and, grabbing her by the ass, hoists her into his arms. She wraps her arms and legs around him, enveloping him in her warmth. He loops a finger quickly under one of her bra straps and gives it a light snap. “Let’s go with this color.”

“Fair enough,” she whispers, a small smile tugging at her lips.

He kisses those lips, closing his eyes to relish how impossibly soft they feel against his.

“Where can I take you?” he asks, his voice made of jagged rocks.

They both know what he’s asking.

“Where do you want to take me?”

The answer is _everywhere_. On the couch where they rubbed against each other until they both came. On the flour-covered counter so that her bare ass becomes covered in it. He wants to eat her out on the kitchen table. Fuck her in her shower and then in the front hallway where her ex showed up begging for a booty call and instead got turned away (because of him, because of _him_... he doesn’t care if his pride in that makes him an asshole). He wants to fuck her against the front door— wants her ass to knock loudly against it with every thrust so that whenever he knocks on her front door that’s all either of them will be able to think about.

He wants her everywhere. But for now, he wants her in her bed. He wants to make it his bed, too, for them to make a bed together. He doesn’t dare call it making love, but he wants it to be good for her, the _best_ for her.

“Your bedroom,” he moans into her mouth as her tongue traces the shape of his lips. “Where’s your bedroom?”

“Down the hall.” The words take forever through all their kissing. “Second door on the left.” His arms tremble, and he tells himself it’s from her weight, although he knows better. He’s hauled bags of dog food out to people’s cars that weigh more than she does. He walks them down the hallway, kicking her bedroom door open with his foot.

He lowers her carefully on her bed and takes a cursory glance around the darkened room. They say you can learn a lot about a person from their bedroom. Katniss’ is a dark green color, spare, spartanly furnished, and tidy. It lacks all the bullshit bric a brac and tchotchkes that littered the dorm rooms and apartments of the other girls who came before her. This room is comfortable and clean.

But every corner betrays the loneliness of the woman who sleeps within its walls.

Above the headboard there’s a large framed print of a forest, the rays of the sun cutting through the tall tree canopy, wide beams of light painting the serene landscape. It’s the only real decoration in the room.

When Peeta looks back down at Katniss, she’s leaning on her elbows, reclined on the bed, waiting for him, her chest heaving as she struggles to breathe. He thinks he can spot a plea in her eyes, an invitation to change whatever it is he’s seen here. He hovers over her, hitching his thumbs in the waistband of her leggings. Silently, she lifts her hips so that he can tug them off of her. Peeta runs his hands down the smooth skin of her legs, peeling the leggings off one leg and then the other. Taking his time— or at least pretending to.

He hooks one of her legs over his shoulder, kissing the arch of her foot, her ankle, her calf in a gradual, reverent procession. He nibbles the muscle of her calf before he begins to lick a path upward, drawing a line past her knee and up the inside of her thigh. He can feel her leg trembling, and something about the way it tremors makes his heart squeeze.

“Shhhh,” he whispers, even though she isn’t speaking.

He crawls up the length of her body and rests his elbows on each side of her head. Katniss’ eyes hold his gaze, and she waits.

“You’re so beautiful,” he tells her, and he knows then, at that exact moment, he has never and will never speak truer words.

She leans up to kiss him, a sweet kiss that promises to give him everything.

“Do you trust me?” he asks her, kissing the corner of her mouth and blazing a path down her neck, where he sucks the delicate flesh at her pulse point.

Her hips thrust upward, searching for him, a groan her only reply. He thrusts his pelvis once to meet hers, the friction creating blinding sparks, fireworks that illuminate a midnight sky, when he closes his eyes.

“Okay, then.” He meets her eyes, his right hand snaking down between them and finding its way into the lacy material of her panties.

His fingers tease their way through her folds, his thumb rubbing agonizingly slow circles on her clit. He brushes her fingers around her entrance, but no matter how much she squirms under his weight, her hips wriggling and begging him to fingerfuck her, to just fuck her, to just _fuck_ her with his hand already, he denies her what she wants. She’s so wet for him, but he wants her to say the words. No, that’s not right. He needs her to say the words.

He needs to hear them.

Peeta’s mouth falls to her breasts, and he takes turns licking insistently at her nipples through the thin fabric of her bra... that preposterous, scanty bra that covers nothing. He nudges at the fabric with his nose, pushing it aside so that he can suck one of her nipples into his mouth, pulling at it and relishing the feel of it on the roof of his mouth. Her skin is delicious, and as he thinks about where his is and what he’s doing, he moans. There’s no part of him that can believe this is real. The vibrations on her nipple make her scrabble mindlessly at his hair, clamping him to her chest.

“Peeta,” she begs him, “please.”

He smiles, burying his face in the mounds of her breasts, and pulls his hand out of her panties. He wants to fuck with her a little bit before he _fucks_ with her. She’s too much fun.

She makes it all so much fun.

“Noooo,” she moans, her hands falling to her underwear, pushing them down as well as she can with the weight of his body on top of her. Consequently, they don’t make it very far.

“No?” he chuckles, rolling off her and onto his back. He lays down next to her, looking at her scowl at him in the dark. “I’ll stop then,” he promises playfully, resting his head on his arms. He keeps smiling, even though the sight of the narrow strip of hair that her panties used to cover makes him painfully hard.

Katniss thwacks him on his bare chest, and he pretends to flinch. “Ow!” he laughs, clutching at her hand and using it to rub the spot where she’d hit him. “What did you do that for?”

But Katniss isn’t in the mood for playful banter and flirting. She climbs onto her knees and kicks her panties off her ankles clumsily in her haste to be rid of them. In one motion she straddles Peeta where he lies on the bed, and when she does he can feel the slick, wet warmth of her arousal seeping onto the bare skin of his stomach.

Fuck. She's wet. So warm and wet.

Katniss reaches behind her and unhooks her bra, pulling its straps down one after the other. She clutches the fabric to her chest, as if he hasn't already seen her tits. As if he hasn't already kissed them and licked them and warmed them with his mouth. But when she finally pulls the fabric away, after what seems like an epoch, he gasps at the sight anyway.

She's completely bare. He wants to turn the lights on to fully comprehend her, to admire every curve and swell and slope. Any trace of playfulness he had is eradicated, the desire to tease and torment wiped away by the need to worship at the body she offers to him. In the dark shadows, hovering above him, she is a deity.

She inches down and lines her center up to his cock and begins the same, slow, steady grind as the other night. Even through the fabric of his sweatpants and boxers he can feel the contours of her pussy hugging him.

Somehow, impossibly, his hands find their way to her hips and hold her in place, stopping her. Katniss whimpers frustratedly and tries to wriggle beneath his hands, but he holds her easily in place; at the point where each of his fingers presses the flesh of her hips her skin becomes as pale as his.

He loves her dark skin, its depth reminding him of hushed secrets whispered with a smile into interlocked fingers, the lull of a long night’s rest, the way his face feels buried in a feather pillow.

He loosens his grip.

He just wants to hear it. Needs to hear it.

“Peeta,” she says, and _yes_ , he thinks. _This is it_.

She leans over him, the sensation of her peaked nipples on his chest causing his hips to thrust upward, to undulate once, twice, three times, before he can calm himself. They kiss— a slow, lingering drag of their lips against each other, and before he can open his eyes she tells him.

“I want you.”

Three words, just three words. But they’re the sum total of everything.

She weighs next to nothing, and he flips her onto the bed, her back landing in a soft thud on the mattress. She squeals— actually _squeals_ — and he takes the giddy, surprised sound with a kiss, keeping it for himself. Her legs wind around his ass, pulling him toward her. They grind and kiss and grasp at each other blindly, senselessly. Peeta paws at her breasts, covering them with his wide hands, his fingers tweaking and plucking at her nipples. He nibbles one, testing her. She bucks upward, her hips searching for relief. When he nips her, grazing her nipple with his teeth, she gasps, “Your pants.” He licks the tender flesh, and she groans, “Take them off.”

She doesn’t have to ask him twice. He stands up, removing his sweatpants and boxers in one fluid motion.

“Jesus fuck,” she says when he stands upright, his dick proudly jutting toward the object of its affections.

Peeta can feel her eyes locked on him, her irises thin crescents nearly engulfed by the black depths of her pupils. Her eyes are trained on one part of him specifically, which makes him feel intensely vulnerable. It’s one thing for Katniss to feel him. It’s another to _see_ him. He wonders what he should be doing with his hands; they feel like they’re hanging there stupidly, so he crosses them against his chest, but, when that feels too closed off, too defensive, he rests them on his hips. But that feels too aggressive, so he drops them back to his side and lets them hang, balling his hands into loose fists.

He wishes she’d just say something, _anything_.

She leans up on her elbows, appraising him for a moment. She reaches with one hand, opening the drawer to her nightstand, and retrieves a condom and a bottle of lube. Tossing them onto the bed, she gestures to the lube. “Looks like we’ll definitely be needing that,” she sighs. Her tone is almost mournful, and Peeta can’t help but laugh. Something inside him breaks open, some shabby defense he hadn’t known was there.

He crawls over her, his cock twitching anxiously the closer he gets to her. Katniss’ hands find their way to his back, caressing him. The way she drags her nails along his skin sends shivers coursing along his spine. Despite the lightness of her touch, her forehead is lined with worry. He hates that she’s afraid of him, of any part of him, hurting her.

That’s not in the stars.

He doesn’t want to take his eyes off her, so he blindly gropes on the sheets until his hands lock on the bottle of lube. When he feels it in his grasp, he chucks the bottle across the room. Katniss’ head darts to the side, as if to look for it.

“Wha-?” she asks, uncomprehending, her eyes still searching in the darkness for the long-gone, never-to-be-seen-again, lost-in-the-Bermuda-Triangle lube.

Peeta’s hand grabs her face firmly but gently, turning her head to make her eyes meet his. “We’re not gonna need that,” he promises her.

“Look. I’m not exactly new at this, but there’s no way _that’s_ gonna fit, Peeta M—” she frowns, her words breaking off, her hands freezing where they rest on his ass. “Christ, Peeta… I don’t even know your last name.”

He laughs, a full-bodied laugh that shakes the entire bed, and as he laughs he can feel the tension evaporating from Katniss’ body. He cups a hand on her cheek and is relieved to see that the merriment he’s feeling is reflected in her face now, too. “It’s Mellark.”

“Mellark.” She repeats it, nodding, seeming to forget that they’re completely naked and that she’s moments away from being thoroughly fucked. “Mellark,” she says.

He watches her mouth form the syllables, how the “l”s roll off her tongue, and thinks that maybe this is the first time in his life he hasn’t hated his last name. He might even love it a little, the way she says it.

“How do you spell that?” she asks.

Peeta smiles mischievously and slides down her body, hooking her right leg, then her left over each of his shoulders. “I can show you,” he tells her. Katniss’ breathing grows ragged and irregular as he kisses and licks his way from her inner thigh to her center, wanting to show her.

She begins to laugh, the sound a mixture of nerves and excitement, but it dies on her lips as Peeta’s tongue flicks her clit.

He spells his name out for her, over and over, until she begins to quake and tremble and gasp it to the ceiling. Over and over. He licks and she quakes and he licks and she calls out for mercy. To _please god_ and _oh my god_ and _don’t stop_ and _Peeta_ and _please_. His dips his fingers inside of her— first one, then two. And gently, as gently as he can, he inserts a third, stretching her, priming her. He watches as he pleasures her, devouring the sight of her hands aimlessly clutching the sheets, roaming across her body, reaching down for him as he laps at her. The musky taste of her fills him, the sight of what he’s capable of doing to her feeds him.

Her hips begin to buck erratically, and he splays his left hand across her abdomen to still her movements. He sucks hard on her sensitive nub, drawing it into his mouth, as he finger fucks her. He curls his fingers, stroking her, stroking as he pumps. His fingers and mouth work her relentlessly, and when she comes, keening his name, he moans at the sound.

He needs to be inside her more than he needs air.

But first he needs to kiss her.

He crawls back up her body, kissing every inch of her along the way. Her pelvic bone. Her stomach. Her ribs. Her breasts (god, how he fucking loves those). Her collarbone. Her throat. As he moves toward her mouth, her juices still coating his chin, she whispers, sounding so unsure, “You’re going to kiss me?”

Now he’s the one to frown uncomprehendingly. “Yeah… planned on it. Why?” He drags a hand across his chin, wiping her arousal and his saliva off his face.

“Don’t,” she says, grabbing his hand and drawing it toward her mouth, kissing the palm. “It’s just that—”

“What?” he asks darkly, knowing exactly where she’s going but needing to hear it for himself.

She squeezes her eyes shut and turns her head to look away. Her face is flushed and heated, and Peeta can’t tell if it’s from coming or from embarrassment.

“What?” he asks again, his tone gentle but brokering no argument.

She looks at him. “Gale— didn’t do that often— or ever, really,” she admits. “And when he did—”

“Yes,” he presses. Needing to _fucking_ hear it.

“He wouldn’t kiss me after.”

What the actual fuck.

Again, there are so many things he could tell her, but he opts to show her instead. He leans over her and runs his tongue along her lower lip, slowly, deliberately. He traces the seam of her mouth, inviting her to open her mouth for him.

She does.

He lets her taste herself.

He wants her to taste herself, how she tastes when she’s been loved and worshipped and licked to oblivion.

If their tongues dance, it’s a slow, sensual dance. They tangle and rub, and she sucks his tongue into her mouth as she clutches his body to hers. As their tongues dance and his cock rubs through her wet folds, Peeta grunts into her mouth.

When her hips begin to thrust upward again, he knows it’s time.

He pulls back to look at her and runs his fingers along the contour of her jaw. He might only be twenty, but he feels like it needs to be said. “I’m not exactly new at this either, Katniss.”

Her eyes glimmer at him in the dark, and she waits for him to continue.

He plants an open-mouthed kiss on her neck, tasting the saltiness of her sweat. “And what I’m saying,” Peeta tells her, “is that we’re going to make this good, all right?”

Their eyes lock and she nods, taking a steadying breath.

Peeta reaches for the condom with one hand and rips the foil package open with his teeth.

“You should check the date on that,” Katniss tells him. She bites her lip, and that familiar gnawing tells Peeta there’s something she isn’t saying.

“And?” he asks.

She groans and covers her face with one hand. “I probably bought that when you were in high school.”

He could make a big deal about it— the fact that their ages seem to be a point of contention for her. That’s going to be an ongoing discussion, he knows. But he has absolutely no interest in talking about it while he’s perfectly capable of showing her that he’s a man who knows what to do with his dick.

So it’s simple. He grabs her hand and brings it to his mouth, running his lips along the delicate skin of her wrist. And he tells her the truth. “Yeah, well if that’s the case I could’ve used it then, too.” He glances down at the condom and frowns. “Sort of.” He tosses it aside and hops off the bed, rummaging in his pants pocket and dumping its contents on the nightstand.

Katniss’ eyebrows arch questioningly as Peeta pulls out another condom.

He rips open the package and pinches the tip of the prophylactic before expertly rolling it on with one hand. He gives a slight shrug, downplaying his words so as not to worry her, and explains, “Eh, it was too small.”

Katniss swallows thickly, so Peeta lies down alongside her, drawing her back to his chest to calm her. He breathes into her neck, sucking the skin, kissing her, and reaches over her slight body to lavish her with his caresses. As she relaxes into him, she begins to rock her hips, her ass pushing against him searchingly.

He reaches down between them and lines the tip of his cock up to her entrance and slowly, gently, inch by inch, he begins to push himself inside her.

“Tell me if it hurts,” he whispers in her ear. Just sliding into her makes him want to explode, so as he pushes inside her he holds still, allowing them both to adjust. He presses his forehead against the back of her head, basking in the clean smell of her shampoo, something herbal and fresh, and relishes the feeling of being inside her. “You’re so tight,” he tells her, words that fall desperately short of describing the way she holds onto him.

He’s not sure what he’s going to have to do not to come… He begins to go through the weekly sales and specials, aisle by aisle, department by department. But then he pictures her standing at the cash register, biting her lip shyly as she slid a bottle of Midol his way, and not even his old tricks of distraction can take his mind off the fact that he’s inside Katniss Everdeen.

She moans, and when she speaks she makes the sweetest sound Peeta has ever heard. “I could do this with you…. always.” She pushes back against him, taking him deeper, encouraging him to move. So he grips her waist and begins to thrust inside her, first shallow, quick thrusts, until she begins to pant, her arm coiling behind her to draw his face toward her. Then he leans over her, kissing the corner of her mouth, and begins to fuck her harder, deeper. He fucks her like this until he can feel her walls clenching around him, milking him to orgasm with her.

He spills into the condom, holding her tightly to his chest. He kisses her neck, her shoulders, her back. He grips her ass, his stomach, her thighs. Peeta takes whatever he can get, not bothering to catch his breath.

They’re still sweaty and panting half an hour later, still licking and kissing and sucking on each other, when she crawls on top of him and asks him to go again.

She pushes his cell phone hastily to the side and flips through his wallet until she locates another condom.

“Last one?” she asks.

At Peeta’s nod, she smirks. “Then let’s make it count.”

As if it could be any other way with Katniss.

**************************

Peeta snores softly, his arm wrapped protectively around Katniss, when his phone lights up on the nightstand. Always a light sleeper, Katniss’ eyes snap open. She leans over to peek at it, unsure as to why it had lit up.

Her stomach coils into a knot at what she sees on the screen.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by DandelionSunset (tumblr: dandelion-sunset)

Katniss lies awake for hours, unable to stop analyzing the text Peeta had received. It flashes repeatedly in her mind like a huge neon sign: _Hey babe! Missed you tonight! See you at work tomorrow! ;)_

She tells herself that it doesn’t mean anything, that she’s worrying for nothing. But the knots in her stomach and lump in her throat disagree. Why would the girl call him ‘babe’ and end with a wink, and why would she attach a picture of herself blowing a kiss?

A blonde. It just _had_ to be a blonde.

The girl looked to be around Peeta’s age, if not younger, and appeared to be in some sort of club or bar. She had a deep tan, doe-like brown eyes, tons of perfectly placed makeup, and wore a low-cut tank displaying the tops of her big breasts. At her sides were two other girls - a redhead and another blonde - both equally as gorgeous. Katniss could tell that this particular girl was the queen bee of the trio, though. She just had that confident, 'I-know-I’m-hot’ look about her. There was nothing subtle about the come-hither look in her eyes, either. Though Katniss tries to convince herself she’s reading too much into it, the tone and intention of the message couldn’t have been more obvious, save for nudes or a straightforward sext.

How well does Peeta know this girl, exactly? Has he slept with her? If so, how many times and how recently was it? Is she simply just a friend? Or maybe she’s a coworker. In any case, it’s apparent she has a lot more than friendship on her mind. She’s young and beautiful; the type that would only have to smile at a guy to make him give her anything she wants - hell, maybe not even that. All she’d really have to do is exist. If it came down to it, why _wouldn’t_ Peeta choose this girl over her? Why would he choose the thirty-year-old, boring homebody over the flirty, outgoing, bombshell that’s his own age? Why would he choose fish sticks over lobster?

Peeta’s arms are still around her, his face nuzzled into the back of her neck. She can feel his lips and warm, steady breath upon her skin. From the softness of his snores, she can tell he’s still sleeping soundly - completely oblivious to the turmoil brewing inside her. She feels like there’s a million miles between them, or more aptly - _years_.

No matter how wonderful he makes her feel when they’re together, or how much chemistry they have in bed, it’s impossible to ignore that there’s a generation gap between them. In the long term of things, how could they ever make it work? It’s easy to forget their respective ages when it’s just them, alone. However, what will his parents think of him dating a much older woman? How will she handle the fact that Peeta’s a sexy twenty-year-old, not even out of college yet, with no shortage of girls throwing themselves at him?

Is it really fair of her to hold him back?

Katniss is startled out of her thoughts as the alarm on Peeta’s phone goes off. He groans and pulls her closer to him, kissing the bare flesh of her shoulder.

“Peeta.” She turns over on her back and runs her hands through his hair. He responds by snuggling his face into the crook of her neck. “You need to wake up.”

She doesn’t even know why his alarm’s going off this early. It occurs to her that she really has no idea what his everyday life is like, outside of the time they spend together.

He reaches past her and grabs his phone from her nightstand. With one eye open, he glances briefly at it to turn the alarm off, then places it back. His arm moves around her again. His fingers caress her upper arms in little circles, causing her skin to break out in goose bumps.

“I can skip classes today. I just want to stay here, with you, for as long as I can,” he murmurs against her neck before planting a soft, lingering kiss there. Though the thought is tempting - after all, who knows how many moments like this they have left - she knows she has to put her feelings aside and be the voice of reason.

“No. You’re not going to fail your classes because of me,” she whispers.

He gives a short, sleepy chuckle. “Okay, _Mom_. I’m awake.” As he sits up, exposing the muscles of his bare back as he yawns and stretches, Katniss feels stung. She knows it was just an expression, that he didn’t mean anything by it, that she’s nowhere close in age to being his mother, but it doesn’t make her feel any less ancient.

He turns back to her with a lazy smile and half-lidded eyes, then leans over to give her a small peck on the lips. Resting his forehead against hers, he says lowly, “Last night was amazing.” She gives a small nod in reply, smiling slightly, but she doesn’t trust herself to speak. “How about one last good morning kiss before I go?”

Katniss nods again, wondering why he even needs to ask; they already kissed a moment ago. Closing her eyes, she waits for his lips to meet hers. Instead, she feels the bed shift and the covers being pulled away, exposing her completely nude body.

She quickly props herself upon her elbows to look down at him, just as he parts her legs and settles his upper body between them. “Peeta, what are you…?” A shiver runs through her as he grins up at her and winks.

He then answers by dipping his head and trailing open-mouthed kisses along her inner thighs. She feels as if she should stop him, but she can’t bring herself to. And why should she? For now, he’s all hers and she’s all he wants. She might as well enjoy the pleasure of the moment, rather than dwelling on the inevitability of future pain.

She bites her bottom lip, letting out a throaty moan as his mouth and fingers finally find the place that aches for him.

Even as she rides the waves of ecstasy he brings, her mind drifts to the thoughts that plagued her before he woke. Has he done this to the girl who texted? How _many_ girls has he done this to? He’s a pro at it, so it’s apparent that he’s had a _lot_ of practice….

Still, she tangles her fingers in his sleep-tousled hair, moans and sighs escaping her as he works his magic below. Afterwards, as she trembles from the intensity of her orgasm, he kisses his way up her body until his lips meet hers. She wraps her arms around his neck to deepen their kiss.

Whatever happens between them from here on out, she’s prepared for the worst. For now, she’ll try to savor the best.

As his lips move to her neck, she whispers with a shaky smile, “I guess I should return the favor and give you a good morning hug then?”

Peeta laughs lowly against her skin, the vibration of it sending a pleasurable shiver down her body, settling between her legs in a dull throb. He shakes his head and tells her, “I have to be in class in thirty minutes. I’ll definitely take a rain check on that, though.”

She admires him as he gets out of bed and dresses. He tells her that he’ll see her this evening.

Then, all too soon, he leaves.

***

She spends the day on the couch, lying under a blanket, as reruns of old sitcoms fill the room with sound. She can’t concentrate on watching anything, though.

Maybe she should ask him about the text. It’d at least bring some closure. But what if he gets mad that she looked at his phone? What if her insecurity winds up ending things, and not the girl? Another thing is, no matter how close they’ve become since they met, they still don’t know each other very well. Hell, she didn’t even know anything about his past, such as the fact that he worked in a bakery and has two brothers, until last night. She can’t expect him to just drop people from his life simply because she feels threatened by their beauty. That’d only cause him to resent her.

When she thinks back to when she was twenty, she feels the age gap between them grow wider than the Grand Canyon. When she was his age, she was still a virgin in every aspect, and the last thing on her mind was tying herself down in a relationship. She had no idea what she wanted in life. Compared to now, she was pretty much a child back then. Peeta definitely has a lot more experience under his belt than she did at his age, but he still has a whole decade to get to where she is now.

The last thing she wants to be is an anchor, preventing him from exploring the rest of the sea. Even so, she can’t help the feeling of total loss when she imagines her world without him in it.

Eventually, she falls asleep to a whirl of conflicting thoughts.

***

She wakes to a dark room as her phone dings.

The knots return to her stomach full force as she reads the message on the screen.

_Peeta: I’m going out with some friends after work. U wanna come? :)_

Katniss frowns, her head aching as she wonders if one of these 'friends’ is the blonde who texted last night. It also reminds her that Peeta has an entire social circle that she’s not a part of. He has a whole separate world that she knows nothing about. She can already imagine showing up with him, feeling like the old hag of the group. She can also imagine the strange looks, whispers, and snickers she’d receive; how they’d probably insinuate or say straight out that she was a cougar 'robbing the cradle’.

No, she wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

 _Katniss: No. It’s been a long day and I’m exhausted. Have fun without me, though_.

She cringes after pressing send, realizing how passive-aggressive that probably sounded.

_Peeta: U sure? R u mad?_

_Katniss: Why would I be mad?_

_Peeta: Don’t know. Just wanted 2 make sure. I can come over instead if u want?_

Of course she wants nothing more than to have him all to herself tonight. But as much time as they’ve spent together, they’ve never left the house once. She can’t really expect him to stay at home with her every night and watch TV. It’s only a matter of time before he’ll become bored with her. He can’t be hers every night. She just hopes he doesn’t become anyone _else’s_ , either.

_Katniss: No, go have fun. I’ll talk to you later, okay?_

_Peeta: Ok…_

He adds a bunch of kissy face emojis at the end of his text, as if everything _is_ fine. It is fine, isn’t it? He has no idea what’s been going through her mind all day. And she can’t be mad at him; he did nothing wrong.

As tears finally pour from her eyes, she realizes the only person she’s annoyed and angry with is herself.

She goes to the fridge and finds a half bottle of Jack Daniels that Gale had left there months ago. Taking a deep breath, she brings it to her mouth and proceeds to chug a third of it. It burns all the way down her throat and chest, and tastes absolutely disgusting, but it’s a nice temporary distraction from the feeling of impending doom growing inside her gut.

Her face numbs and the room spins as she sits back down on the couch and begins to absentmindedly flip through channels. The whiskey has the opposite effect she’d been going for, and causes her to worry even more.

Around thirty minutes later, she wipes hastily at her face as she hears a knock on the front door.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by Everylark (tumblr: everlylark)

Katniss drags her half drunk, anxious ass to the door. Closing one eye, she peers through the peephole and tries to keep her heart from jumping out of her body. She has absolutely no idea who would be at her door.

“Fucking A.” Katniss mutters to herself as she slides open the lock and throws open the door. Standing in a perfect triangle like three god damn Charlie’s Angels wannabes are her friends. The friends that she has probably been seriously neglecting lately.

“Let us in Everdeen. You smell like desperation and Jack.” Jo busts her way in the front door wrinkling her nose as she walks by. Her brunette hair is cropped close to her head and styled perfectly. Katniss couldn’t help but notice the super low cut black mini-dress her friend is rocking. The thigh high lace up heeled boots just add to the impeccable look. Looking over to see Madge in skintight leather pants and a red halter and Annie in a green lace dress, she finally puts two and two together.

“I’m not going out.” Katniss’s face twists into a scowl. “I’m too damn old for this shit. Can’t we just you know watch Downton and drink?” Her last question comes off as more of a pathetic whine.

“Hell no. Kat, when was the last time you got laid? I mean like really got laid. Not of the ‘I stick my dick in and swivel once and poof!’ variety?” Madge narrows her perfectly blue eyes in her direction.

Katniss pointedly ignores her. She isn’t ready to talk about Peeta. It was none of their business. She doesn’t want to answer the questions. It’s not that she is ashamed, because damn even at 20 he is a catch. She just really doesn’t want them knowing quite yet. Besides Peeta is probably out at the club rubbing his dick against some other girls back. Dancing to the music, holding her real close. Fuck this shit. The rage she feels creeps up the back of her neck and she can feel the scowl on her face.

“Ugh. Fine. Dress me up and take me out. But make me look hot. Like hotter than a frumpy old Mom, got it?” Katniss relents as Madge squeals with delight and rushes towards the bedroom. Annie quietly looks at Katniss with a soft head tilt as she can see right through her. As Jo ran off to help Madge “find something super slutty”, Annie quietly speaks.

“Something you wanna talk about?” Annie’s soft green eyes were warm and kind. She had this innate ability to sense Katniss’s inner workings and can probably see the insecurities on her face. Katniss knew she came from a place of genuine concern, but she still wasn’t ready to spill. Instead she reaches out and gently puts her arm around Annie’s shoulder.

“Let’s go make me look fuckable. I’m not sure we have enough time or makeup.”

—————————————————————

The Hob is packed wall to wall with sweaty bodies.Madge and Annie go immediately towards the dance floor, and Katniss shimmies up the bar to signal the bartender.

“Gin and tonic please.” She yells over the noise of the DJ. The handsome bartender appraises her from head to toe, landing on the cleavage the slinky silver dress displayed. Well plus the black lace push up bra that made her ‘just a handful’ rack look like it was much more.

“Anything else beautiful?” He smiles as he flirts with her.

“Yes! Make that 2.” Jo’s voice could be heard behind her. The bartender starts making their drinks and Jo gives Katniss a long look.

“Well hot damn Everdeen. We made you look downright fuckable tonight. If I didn’t know you so well, I’d try to take you home.” Jo winks. Jo’s penchant for either sex was well known, however Katniss knew she was kidding. Katniss is too moody for her anyways. That’s not her type.

Katniss tugs a bit at the ridiculously short silver dress. The dress is literally made with a few small scraps of glittering fabric. It drapes suggestively in the front and when she turns around it is completely backless showing off the smooth expanse of olive skin. Her trim legs and arms are on display and she feels sexy. The only wild card are the sky high heels that make her wobble like a Weeble when she is sober. Dancing in them while drinking is going to be interesting.

After opening a tab and grabbing their drinks, the girls meet Madge and Annie out on the dance floor. Madge was already wrapped around a tall, handsome man. Annie was also giggling as she chatted with an Adonis like auburn haired God.The music was flowing and Katniss feels the stress begin to flow out of her with every beat of the song.

It is 5 songs and 2 drinks later and Katniss is dancing next to Madge as they sing along with the beats of Sir Mix A Lot, when it happens. Just as she yells, “sprung”, her eyes make contact with bright blue ones across the floor. She would recognize those eyes and that mop of blonde curls anywhere.

Then her eyes connect with the blonde getting low on her guys dick. The dick that was in her just this morning. Also, she’s like 99% sure it’s the exact doe eyed blonde from the text.

With the liquor coursing through her veins like a runaway freight train she makes her way across the floor. Peeta moves slowly towards her and tries to shake off the blonde bitch who is attached to him like a barnacle.

“Is this a dream?” Peeta murmurs as his glassy eyes try to bring Katniss in focus. “All my good dreams start with you dressed like that. Fuck. I’m getting hard just looking at you.” Peeta licks his lips as he reaches for her. His hand touches her face and she can feel the warmth there. His eyes are on fire and she can see the heat. She wants nothing more than to take him home and let him fuck her senseless.

Just then Miss Blonde-I-can’t-take-a-fucking-hint creeps up and wraps her arms around Peeta from behind essentially getting between Katniss and Peeta.

“Peeta, aren’t you going to introduce me?” Turning her tarantula lashed gaze towards Katniss she continues. “Who is the old lady? An older sister? Cousin?” Then she bursts out laughing. “His Mom?”

The word “mom” pierces Katniss like an arrow through her heart. She can barely hear the blonde’s laughter or Peeta calling her name as she spins on her heel and wobbly pushes her way through the crowd. Stopping to pull off her heels so she can move quicker, the unwelcome sadness pours through her head and heart. ‘Mom’ she thinks; she’s no one’s mom. Not even Prim’s. Yes, she may have given up all that time to make sure Prim had exactly what she needed in life, but she wasn’t her mother. She was her sister. In fact, she wasn’t even sure she ever wanted to be anyone’s mother. Katniss can’t shake the feeling that this was all a horrible mistake. Peeta deserved someone his own age. Someone who could give him the world. Every single insecurity she had thought throughout the whole day came rushing back. Everything hurt.

The cold air hits her in the face as she pushes through the doors to hail a cab. Her tears make deep black trails down her once perfectly made up face. As she rummages in her bag to pull out her phone and texts the girls, she hears a voice behind her.

“Katniss! Wait!!”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by papofglencoe
> 
> This installment contains lyrics from “Clan in Da Front” by Wu-Tang Clan, “It’s Tricky” by Run-D.M.C., “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot, and “Ms. Jackson” by OutKast.

Her ass keeps grinding against his dick in time to the beat, and every time she rubs against him he takes half a step back, trying to escape the friction. In the darkness of the club, in the crush of bodies, with the narrow beams of the spotlights flashing and strobing overhead, he’s having a hard time keeping his balance. The tequila courses through him, warming him, and he’s already feeling hot, so uncomfortably hot, that he has to remember to breathe.

She lifts an arm above her head and reaches behind her, drawing him closer to her, inviting him to touch her, to exhale feverishly in the crook of her neck as they move in tandem. Her fingers card through his sweaty hair, massaging his cool perspiration back onto his scalp, making him shiver.

“Glim, what are you doing?” Peeta protests, his voice a guttural growl in her ear. He plants his hands firmly on her hips in an effort to create enough space between them for the Holy Ghost.

“Having a good time,” she yells over her shoulder, thrusting her ass smoothly against his groin in one quick move, coaxing his cock to respond to her as if to say: This. _This is how we have a good time. Remember?_

He’s disappointed in himself as he begins to harden against her, his dick involuntarily stiffening at the press of another body to his.

He closes his eyes and thinks of Katniss, wishing he were dancing with her instead of Glimmer. No matter how hard he tries to have a good time, the truth has followed him all night and hounds him as he moves on the dancefloor. He can’t escape her.

Katniss is all he wants. Her lips. The way her hips rock and sway when he’s inside her. The smile that creeps its way, unbidden, onto her face, whenever she sees him. Her throaty moans. The flush on her chest and neck as he makes her come. Her body curling into his as they snuggle on the couch, Katniss tucked into the hollow of his arm, rooted to his chest like some tenacious vine. Her voice, its musicality when she speaks, inviting him to lose himself in her words, her words that are never enough. Every single one of her eccentricities— like the way she places her spoon in her mouth upside down when she eats ice cream, pulling it out so that the metal lightly scrapes against her front teeth— all of her, that’s what he wants.

The rest of the world is shadows and echoes, reverberations and ghosts.

He doesn’t care if she is too tired to hang out or if she has to work early tomorrow. Whatever excuse she might have had for not getting together is fundamentally flawed because he would have been content to watch her nap on the couch all night, to feel her sleep beside him, her chest rising and falling peacefully, knowing that she feels safe and protected enough with him to do that, to be like that.

Every time Glimmer presses herself against him, Peeta regrets that he didn’t just go to Katniss’ apartment, even if she hadn’t wanted him there ( _and why? As Glimmer bumps and shifts against him, rubbing her crotch now against his thigh, he wonders why Katniss didn’t want to see him. He’d thought that last night had been perfect, but what if she didn’t feel the same way? Had he missed something, done something wrong? Was she embarrassed to be seen with him?_ ). What he wants to tell Katniss— right this minute, in fact, as he resists the urge to pull out his cellphone and text her— is that she could make cleaning toilets fun. And that, without her, everything else seems dull and compulsory. Like tonight: _required_ fun. It’s fun that, in the miles spanning between them, feels like torture.

He shoves his fingers into the small of Glimmer’s back to make her stop humping his leg, but she’s drunk, too, and, taking his touch as a sign of encouragement, she bears down harder.

Peeta had hoped Katniss would come out tonight to meet his friends. Since the first time he’d spoken to her at the store, months ago, he’d wanted to show them, to tell them, “This girl. Look at this _fucking girl_.” And now that they are together— or whatever it is she’ll allow them to be— he wants them to know she’s his (inexplicably his) and that he’s hers. Aside from Glimmer, who insists on complicating a fairly uncomplicated situation, he’s positive his friends are going to love her. How could they not?

When Thresh mentioned it was old school night at the Hob, where their fake IDs are graciously accepted like VIP backstage passes, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. All of his best friends, his girl, some classic rap and hip hop. What could go wrong?

The answer to that is currently getting herself off on his leg.

The answer to that is in his bloodstream, driving him, infecting him.

He should have guessed from the text Glimmer sent him last night that she was going to be in the mood to start shit. The first words out of her mouth as she walked up to him at the bar confirmed that, as she scanned the room for Katniss and, not seeing her, barbed, “What, no _lady_ friend? And here I was thinking it was _old_ school night.”

It had been _one_ time— one passionless hookup months ago, inspired by the fact that Glimmer’s dickwad boyfriend Cato had just dumped her and Peeta’s shoulder just happened to be the one she’d been crying on. They’d been friends before and friends after, and Glimmer had never seemed to mind in the least that’s all they were until she noticed him talking to Katniss.

Then the texts started flooding in and the late-night phone calls— he’d learned quickly never to answer or return those. He’s given her no encouragement, but the less he gives, the more aggressive she gets. It’s like some game she’s playing, and Peeta’s way of dealing with it so far has been to ignore it and hope she gets bored when she realizes she’s the only one playing. She’s not into him, he knows that. Really. She’s even seeing someone now— casually, anyway.

No, Glimmer isn’t into him. She just doesn’t want him being into anyone else.

Spinning around, she faces him, straddling his thigh, and drapes her arms casually over his shoulders. In the brief pause between songs, the mere fraction of a second between beats, she leans in as if to kiss him.

Her lips are a bright pink, her heavily made up face glittering under the spotlights. Long, blonde hair cascades around her shoulders, hanging around her four-plus inches of cleavage. She’s busty and outgoing and bursting with self-confidence. Tonight her eyes are green.

She’s nothing like Katniss.

Glimmer tilts her face up, her chin jutting toward him as her eyes fall to his lips. His shoulders tense up, his voice sounds a warning, “Glim—”

Before he can tell her they’re not like that, that they’re _never_ going to be like that, the RZA’s voice pipes in over the loudspeakers, heralding the beginning of the next song with a triumphant cry, “ _Up from the 36 Chambers_!” As the bassline kicks in, the entire crowd springs to life around them, jumping and dancing in time to the repeated lyrics, “ _Wu-Tang killa beez, we on a swarm_!” Glimmer begins to sing along, recklessly throwing her arms in the air, and Peeta joins in, thankful for the distraction. Within seconds he forgets what he’d meant to say, the moment swallowed in a haze of inebriation.

A few songs later Thresh, Delly, and Rue swing by with another round of shots, and they’re knocking them back when Peeta spots a woman over by the bar who reminds him of Katniss, even though he knows it can’t be her because Katniss is at home _exhausted_. The bartender grins flirtatiously at the woman at the bar, leaning forward much closer than necessary to take her drink order. A couple guys gape at her ass, nudging each other with their elbows and arguing over something. Probably over who gets to try to get in her panties, based off the fact that they’re total douchebags.

Peeta watches her from across the club as the next song begins, considering her.

_This speech is my recital._

This woman’s dark hair falls in soft waves around her slight shoulders.

_I think it’s very vital._

She’s wearing a scrap of fabric that passes as a dress, some shiny silver thing that barely covers her ass, that accentuates the smooth olive skin of her legs.

_To rock a rhyme_

The calves of her legs are toned, the muscles taut as she balances in a pair of towering black heels, heels that don’t conceal her diminutive stature.

_That’s right on time_

Her dress is backless, her skin an unblemished, blank canvas calling to him.

 _It’s Tricky_.

If she’d been wearing sweatpants, her hair casually plaited into a braid, her face clean and unmarred by all that makeup, she’d be a ringer for Katniss.

He rips his eyes away, not interested in checking out random women. But the similarity is so uncanny Peeta briefly contemplates approaching the girl to ask if her name happens to be Prim. They could be sisters, Katniss and that girl. He decides not to say anything to her because, no matter how he’d phrase it, it would only come across as some skeevy pickup line.

Glimmer grabs his arm, squeezing it impatiently, beckoning him to dance more with her. Beckoning him to do more than he wants to do with anyone but Katniss.

Over the course of the next forty minutes Peeta loses a few things:

The doppelganger, who disappears somewhere in the crowd, flanked by a couple girls.

His sense of time as the music propels him forward, one song after another.

His grasp on reality as the alcohol soaks deeper and deeper into him, saturating him, blurring the edges of his vision and casting a sheen on everything he sees. …

And his ability to keep Glimmer off his dick.

He still knows the music, though— it’s inherent to him, ingrained in him— and he raps along with the crowd, looking around and laughing as they sing in unison. “ _I like big butts and I cannot lie. You other brothers can’t deny that, when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist and a round thing in your face, you get…_ ”

KATNISS. It’s her. He realizes it’s her, and suddenly there’s no air left in the room. The room is a vacuum, choking him, and his lungs burn for oxygen.

His eyes lock on hers, and her eyes lock on his, and they gravitate toward each other like two neutron stars colliding. Glimmer follows in his wake, into whatever black hole Katniss and Peeta’s collision will inevitably, inexorably make.

If it weren’t for her scowl he’d doubt it was Katniss at all. He’s too drunk to consider why she’d be looking at him like that, too lost in the sight of her, but he’s thankful for that scowl, for that little reminder that it’s Katniss, _his girl_ , who is standing in front of him.

It’s been sixteen hours since he last saw her. Sixteen hours since he touched her. Since he heard her voice, tasted her on his lips. Too long. The way his stomach clenches at the sight of her reminds him how famished he’s been for her.

He’s _starving_ for her.

Peeta gapes at Katniss in that dress that’s no dress at all. It barely covers her breasts, and he wants to cover her with his body, to cover her in kisses, to draw those perfect breasts into his mouth one by one and worship them. The dress hugs her body, snugly accentuating every curve and swell. But it doesn’t hug her like her could.

He wants her— _needs_ her— out of that dress.

“Is this a dream?” he murmurs, refusing to believe his eyes, unable to accept the reality that just this morning he’d been between her legs, that he knows how this woman tastes on his tongue. “All my good dreams start with you dressed like that.” His eyes fall down her body, raking slowly across her as if to memorize each inch. “Fuck. I’m getting hard just looking at you.”

He licks his lips and reaches out for her, needing to touch her. Wanting to touch all of her, to climb up inside her and root there, remain there, _die_ there, but settling instead for the feel of her cheek against his heated palm.

Katniss’ face is flushed, the hair at her temples damp from the humidity of the room. He’s not sure why, but he thinks she looks sad to see him. Disappointed, even.

The world is spinning, the floor is writhing beneath him, the strobes are painting streaks of light through the air, and the music is pumping through his veins. But all he can notice is Katniss standing in front of him.

He’s about to ask her how… _how is she here? how did they find each other? how is she_ his?, but Glimmer possessively twines her arms around him and asks, in a saccharine voice filled with daggers and landmines and poison, “Peeta, aren’t you going to introduce me?” His stomach fills with lead when she looks at Katniss and adds, “Who is the old lady? An older sister? Cousin?” She laughs, and the vicious sound slices through the air like a guillotine. “His _Mom_?”

He watches Katniss’ face fall and her eyes glaze over, and he wants to beg _no no no please god no, not this_ , but before he can open his mouth to speak she is pushing frantically through the crowd. Her small hands jostle and shove at the shoulders and backs and arms of every oblivious person standing in her way, and in the blink of an eye she’s disappeared.

Glimmer’s laugh carries over the music and Peeta reels, stupidly trying to process _what just happened, what the fuck just happened_ , raking both hands through his hair.

She has the nerve— Glimmer actually has the _nerve_ — to touch him. One of her hands curls around his bicep, trying to pull an arm around her, but he easily wrests it from her grasp.

His voice is ice and hellfire wrapped into one. He sounds like a monster. He sounds like his mother. “Don’t,” he cautions her. “Don’t ever fucking touch me or talk to me again.”

Glimmer’s eyes grow wide, her mouth falls open in a silent “o” of shock. “But, Peeta,” she begins, “I was just jok—”

“No,” he shakes his head, his fists clenching and unclenching at his side. He’s never hit someone, would never hit a girl, but he’s so angry he wants to punch the wall and— _goddammit_ — he can’t think straight. “You’re despicable and pathetic.” The syllables sound slurred, the alcohol robbing him of the words he wants to use as weapons against her. He’s not used to this, the alcohol-induced aphasia, and his inability to grasp onto what he’d like to say frustrates him.

But he’s said what he could to Glimmer, for now.

Now he needs to find Katniss.

He heads for the front door, weaving through the thick crowd as quickly as he can, his heart thundering in his chest. People gripe at him and bicker to his back, but he doesn’t care. He unceremoniously cuts in front of people, pushing them aside with his shoulders. But the truth is that manners are for grandparents and job interviews and church. They’re not for chasing down the one person in this universe you’re fucking desperate for.

It’s a cloudy, moonless fall night, and when Peeta finally bursts through the front door and onto the damp pavement, it takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the unnatural glow of the light cast by the sodium street lamps. He surveys the crowd of smokers milling around the door, scanning each person’s face to see if she’s hidden among them. Pedestrians rush by on the packed sidewalk, their coat collars turned up to ward off the chill, shopping bags and purses clutched defensively to their chests. There’s so many people. Too many people. But none of them are Katniss.

A yellow cab pulls up to the curb, the squealing of its brakes drawing Peeta’s gaze to it. Through the small crowd standing at the taxi stand, he spots her. She looks small, so much smaller than he knew a person could be, and as she rummages through her bag he can see her shoulders shaking.

“Katniss!” he yells, sick to his stomach, trying not to vomit from panic and terror and grief and desperation. “Wait!!”

Her face whips around, and as he bolts toward her he can see the dark tracks lining her face, the kohl-colored rivers of mascara and eyeliner forming gullies for her tears.

She takes a precarious step backward, and it sends a pang searing through his heart that her first instinct is to recoil from him.

“No,” he begs her. “Please don’t go yet.”

“Go away, Peeta,” she rasps, the words sounding like shredded ribbons or some beautiful glass bauble crushed underfoot, pulverized by a boot heel on unforgiving asphalt. “Go back inside to your girlfriend.”

He lunges forward and grabs her arm, pulling her away from the taxi stand and back, back until they’re beneath the awning of the building and it seems like it’s just the two of them. Katniss winces at the contact, and they both stare at where his hand clutches the bare skin of her arm, gripping her so tightly he’s leaving impressions of his fingertips on her. He releases her quickly.

“Shit,” he moans, staring at her thin arm, watching the blood pool back to the spots where his fingers had held her fast. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” she tells him, and then, biting her lip, she looks off into the gloom of the night, her eyes unfocused and indistinct, and adds, “Yes.” She wraps her arms around her body and shivers, her body visibly shaking. A fat tear drops down her cheek, and she swipes it away impatiently, refusing to look at him. She shivers again, and Peeta thinks he can hear her teeth chattering, even over the noise of the street. He doesn’t have a coat to offer her, only his arms. But he doesn’t think she wants those, not after what just happened inside the Hob. Not after what she just said.

“It’s not what it looks like, Katniss,” he tries to assure her, but his words taste like a lie in his mouth because, if she asks, he’ll have to tell her that it’s _sort of_ what it looks like. At least it was that one time. He adds, because it is the bald truth, “She’s not my girlfriend.”

Her gray eyes meet his then, and the look he sees in them silences him, shuts him down. “Don’t lie to me. I saw you two in there. I _know_ , Peeta.” Her voice is hateful as she mimics Glimmer’s text, “Hey babe! _Missed you tonight_.” She spits the words at him, hurls them back in his face.

His initial reaction is mortification, and in a sober state of mind he would try to reason with her, to explain that it was a text Glimmer had sent him. A text he never replied to, one in a long line of unanswered missives.

But he’s not sober, not at all, and so his desire to reason with her is subsumed by anger. “You were looking at my fucking phone? While we were sleeping together, and I was holding you, you were looking through my phone— for what? For shit to call me on? A way out?”

“No,” she retorts defensively, “The message woke me up when it came through at two fucking a.m.” She impatiently swipes at her lower lip, unconsciously smearing her dark red lipstick onto her chin.

Peeta can’t help but notice that it looks like Jackson Pollock put her makeup on for her. Katniss’ mess of a face looks like his heart— breaking, splattering, exploding violently, tragically open. A wreck. They’re wrecked. She’s wrecked him, and he’s wrecked her, and maybe that’s all that’s left of them.

Her voice is deadly. “ _Should_ I have been?”

He scrubs his face, not understanding, not following. “You’re going to have to be more specific. Should you have been _what_ , Katniss?”

She huffs humorlessly. “Looking for _shit_ to call you on.”

He searches her face, his pulse throbbing so loudly in his ears he can’t hear himself speak. “Say it. Whatever it is you want to say to me, just say it. Because I’ve never lied to you, not once. You tell me you’re _too exhausted_ to go out with me and my friends, and wouldn’t you know it? I run into you at a bar.” He chokes on the next words, hates himself for even thinking them, much less saying them. “I run into you in a bar… in that dress… and shit, Katniss. You’ve got your ex calling you, showing up at your front door, so what shit are you going to call _me_ on?” As he says the words, he wants to hate her, but even though he’s angry and jealous and defensive, he can’t hate her. He hates himself.

But he kind of loves her.

She replies, but she doesn’t speak.

Speaking would be the rational response of a clear and sober mind, one unfettered by jealousy and gin.

Instead, she yells— or maybe it just feels that way.

Her voice carries through the night, and everything around them falls silent to listen. Planes fall from the sky, the wind dies, the subway screeches to a halt, shoppers freeze mid-purchase, their credit cards extended outward to eager cashiers with fake smiles plastered on obsequious faces, and pigeons hunch in their roosts, cocking their heads. Everything stops to listen to Katniss.

Her voice is beautiful. Her voice is terrible. “Don’t pretend you haven’t fucked around, Peeta.”

He looks over his shoulder, suddenly conscious that they have an audience.

“You alright?” a lanky, bronze-haired guy asks Katniss, ignoring Peeta altogether, as he leans casually against the brick facade of the building. When she nods, the watchful eyes around them disperse, instantly disinterested.

Like all people, they just want a good show.

Peeta grabs her arm, lightly this time, and leads her around the corner of the building, into the alleyway between the Hob and the nondescript building next door. If they’re going to have this conversation now, and he guesses that there’s no choice in the matter, then it’s going to be in private.

“Where are we going?” Katniss grumbles, walking unsteadily on the deeply potholed, pocked pavement of the alley. Peeta doesn’t exactly know, but he steadies her as they walk, sloshing through filthy puddles of water. Halfway down the alley, between two hulking, overfilled dumpsters, he spots the stage door of the club. It’s slightly ajar, the stage lights illuminating the doorframe. The heat of the club radiates outside, dispelling some of the chilly night air.

“Over there,” he nods, figuring that they’ll be safe here and hopefully less cold too.

Katniss leans against the brick wall of the club for support and bites the inside of her cheek, waiting for Peeta to speak.

He takes his thumb and swipes a streak of mascara off her cheek, looking at the black smear on the pad of his thumb like he can read their futures in it. He takes a deep breath to steady himself and rests his right hand on the brick wall above Katniss’ shoulder, leaning in close to her so that she can hear him over the music filtering out of the club.

His voice is low in her ear, as low and steady as the bass. “If you want to ask me how many girls I’ve slept with, Katniss, that’s fair. I’ll tell you. But I think what you really need to know is how many I’ve slept with since the day I met you.”

He pulls away slightly to look at her face, gauging her reaction to his words. Peeta wants her to ask him more than anything. _Ask me_ , he begs her silently. _Ask_.

Naturally, then, she doesn’t. She’s too proud, too stubborn, this hard-headed, maddening woman. She holds her chin high, and meets his eye, holding his gaze. Even in the dark of the alley, he can see the red lining her eyes and the way the alcohol has flushed her face. Her features are swollen, her makeup smeared, and she looks like a goddamn masterpiece anyway.

“You won’t ask,” he scoffs, so pissed at her he can barely stand. “And why’s that? Afraid you’ll hear something that might prove your idea of me wrong?”

He drops his head to her neck, his lips brushing her chilled skin. She feels the answer rather than hears it; he lets it sink into her nerves, traveling through her body to whatever damaged place within her that needs to hear it most. “One, Katniss. The answer is _one_. You. Only you. From the minute we met, it’s just been you.” His lips travel upward, skimming along her jaw, hovering at the corner of her mouth. “I can live with that. I _want_ to live with that. Can you?”

Her voice cuts him off before he can kiss her. “Don’t—”

It feels like he’s just been sucker punched, and he doesn’t exactly know why. He stands up straight and falters backward. It’s so silent between them he can hear the clacking of heels on the pavement from the end of the alleyway as someone passes by. After a moment, he clears his head enough to ask her why. He thinks she owes him that much, just an answer.

Why can’t she live with it?

Her shoulders slump, and she rests her ass heavily against the wall as if the damn thing could take the weight off every burden she’s carrying. She stares at her heels, transfixed by them, _apparently_ , and Peeta wants to rip them off her feet and chuck them down the fucking alley just so that she’ll look at him again. When she finally answers, her voice is so quiet he thinks he’s imagining her words.

“Because she’s right, and you know it. _Ten years_ , Peeta. Do you know what people would say when they saw us together? Do you know what they would say about me? About you?”

Peeta shrugs, the words coming to him easily for the first time tonight. “I don’t honestly care.”

He wishes he knew why she did.

Katniss scowls and looks down the alleyway, the distant lights of the street catching in her charcoal gray eyes. “What’s this about anyway?” She takes a long, shuddering breath. “What are you trying to prove? Are you trying to get back at your parents… working out some mommy issues or something?”

He rends at his hair and resists the urge to growl at her, to actually, _honest-to-fuck-growl_ in frustration. “For _chrissakes_ , Katniss.” And then, because he can’t stand being so far from her, he storms toward her and pins her in place by resting both his arms against the wall. At this distance, he gives her no choice but to meet his eyes. When he’s this close he can count every goosebump on her skin, can feel her hot breath condensing on his neck and then dissipating in the bitter night air. His eyes fall to her lips, and she licks them, the moisture glistening from the low light pooling through the stage door.

Peeta hears himself speak, but he can’t control the words tumbling out of his mouth. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. It’s not fair. You’re not being fair.” His right palm smacks the cold brick wall, and the rough texture abrading his skin is the first thing that has felt right all night. “It’s not fucking fair—”

“No.” She cuts him off, her voice filled with resignation and regret. “It’s not fair.” He watches her hand skate up his chest, and his heart thunders with hope. He closes his eyes, relishing the feel of her fingers toying with his hair, loosely running through the strands. This is the second thing that has felt right all night.

But her hand freezes and the world implodes and Peeta dies inside when she tells him, “This was a mistake.”

He shakes his head, refusing to accept that, and grinds his jaw, trying to work out some of the panic and anger swelling within him. “Don’t say that.” His hands fall to her waist, and he squeezes her tightly, his fingers digging into her hipbones with every syllable like some desperate Morse code, an SOS, being tapped through her body. “Don’t say it. Please don’t say it.”

She meets his gaze, and he reads the goodbye written across the planes of her face. He wishes he couldn’t, begs himself to become illiterate to her. “It was a mistake,” she repeats, her voice inflectionless.

His head drops onto her shoulder, and he buries his face in her smooth, naked skin. _So this is how I die_ , he thinks. _Holding her like this. Listening to her traitorous chorus, a lie. A lie_.

 _Thoughts of me, thoughts of she, thoughts of he_ —

 _Asking what happened to the feeling that her and me_ —

The music creeps through the door and into the dark alleyway, and the angst in the lyrics rocks him, punching him in a way he’d never been hit before. This pain is new to him, this anguished longing.

He had thought himself something of an expert on pain, but this… this is an entirely new kind.

He runs his mouth along her shoulder, and her head falls back against the brick wall “Repeating yourself doesn’t make it real, Katniss.” He drags his tongue along her exposed collarbone, and because he’s beyond fucking pissed she would believe that of them, _do_ this to them, he nips her skin roughly. He bites her again and again, along her collarbone, on her neck, working his way up to her earlobe, where he clamps down and draws it into his mouth, sucking and working the sensitive skin until she hisses and her pelvis bucks against him.

He lowers himself to grind against her, rubbing his hardening cock against her, and she moans into his ear, goading him on. His hands skate down along her waist, down to the bare skin of her legs, and begin to drag a path upward, hitching her short scrap of a dress up over her ass.

“It was a mist-” she begins, but he kisses her to shut her up because he can’t hear her say that another time or he’ll go mad. His lips press savagely against hers, stealing her breath, and as he pulls her closer to him by the bare skin of her ass, she kisses him back, biting his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

Peeta pulls back to look at her, to make sure that what he’s doing is okay, but she pulls him back down to her mouth, sucking at his wound, worrying it with her tongue.

“Fuck,” he groans into her mouth, running his tongue along her teeth to taste the sharp metallic tang of his own blood.

 _So who you placing the blame on, you keep on singing the same song_ —

 _Let bygones be bygones, you can go on and get the hell on_ —

 _You and your mama_ —

Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the liquor, maybe it’s the way Katniss is grinding herself against him, but his hands drag upward until one rubs her clit through the thin fabric of her thong and the other kneads her ass, working her like dough. He runs his index finger along her slit to her entrance, feeling how wet she is, already soaking through her flimsy underwear.

Their chests heave in unison, both of them smothered by want, and when Peeta feels Katniss’ hands reach for his fly and unzip, reaching into his boxers to pull his cock out, he yanks her underwear down. The fabric pools around her ankles, and she clumsily kicks it off, pumping his erection while she teeters in her heels.

The discarded garment hasn’t hit the ground before Peeta wraps Katniss’ right leg around his waist, begging her to climb him so that he climb inside her.

She slings her arms around his broad shoulders, and he hoists her up, pressing her back against the brick wall for support. She hisses as the cold, harsh clay touches her bare skin, but he kisses the sound away and pushes inside of her.

“Oh god—” she moans loudly, almost crying, and Peeta kisses that sound away too, flicking his tongue into her mouth, caressing her tongue in penance for any pain.

Her fingers gouge into his back, and she digs her heels tightly around his waist, so tightly it feels like she’s pinching every damn nerve in his back. But she’s so warm and wet, and all he can think about is the feel of her pussy on his bare skin, the sound of their flesh smacking in time to the music, that he can’t care about the pain.

He fucks her hard and fast, and every time he drives deep inside her, his pelvic bone rubbing harshly against her clit, she wails and cries and moans and begs him for more.

The music from the club and the noise from the street are loud.

But Katniss is louder.

Peeta presses a palm to her cheek. “Shhh,” he whispers, searching for words, any words, when everything he knows is lost somewhere inside of Katniss. “Someone’s gonna hear…” He feels her muscles clench in response, squeezing him tighter, and she throws her head back against the wall, the brick snagging and grabbing at her locks, mussing and tangling it into a rat’s nest.

She turns her head so that his palm is over her mouth and licks his skin. It’s hot, it’s fucking hot, and just the thought of Katniss asking him to silence her moans makes him want to explode inside her. He presses his palm firmly against her mouth and watches her.

She watches him too, her eyes glazed over with pleasure and pain and booze and heartbreak.

He fucks her as long as he can, his legs trembling from carrying most of their weight, until he she squeezes her eyes shut and comes hard, her pulsating muscles wringing his own orgasm from him.

He leans in and kisses the back of his hand, where her mouth would be, as he spills inside of her.

He’s still dizzy and euphoric, holding her tightly to his chest and grappling for the right words to tell her what she means to him, what effect she has on him, when her legs slip from his waist. His hand falls from her mouth as he remembers there’s no more moans to stifle. Peeta tucks himself back into his pants, making sure Katniss has solid footing before taking half a step back to look at her.

He can’t wipe the moony smile off his face because he’s a drunken, stupid fool.

A drunken, stupid fool who just fucked the girl he loves in a filthy, grimy alleyway.

Katniss pulls down her dress and smooths her hair, her colossally snarled hair, her gaze fixed to the ground.

Peeta begins to speak, to tell her every single thing she makes him feel, or at least to try. “That was—”

“— A mistake.”

It’s a broken record, this lie she tells him— just words repeated, their potency gleaned from the galling repetition of one false note, not from any basis in truth.

She walks up to him, kissing him gently like he might break and tells him, “I’ll see you at the store.”

Peeta stand there, dumbfounded and helpless, watching the girl he loves walk away, down the alley toward the street. She disappears into the jungle of the city, swallowed by the shadows of the night.

She turns around to look at him one last time, something like a wistful smile toying at the corner of her mouth.

And that’s when he loses her.

********************************

His semen is still warm and sliding down the inside of her thighs when she walks away from him. He doesn’t know it, but she’s left her heart with him for safekeeping.

She won’t need it anymore, she doesn’t think.

He can keep it and live with it and then, when he finds the right girl, he can stow it away in a box of memories in some dark place, some alcove in his basement where no one ever goes, some secret spot, danky and musty and forgotten, where it can beat alone, and die one day, unattended and unmourned.

She tries not to trip, tries not to fall, because once you fall it’s impossible to pick yourself back up, to stitch yourself back together in one piece. It takes so long to do that, to put yourself back together. She doesn’t have the time to do that again.

But she can’t resist turning back for one last glimpse of him. He stands there, fists clenched at his side, his jaw rolling from tension and hurt.

And she’s crying, the tears sliding down her face, falling to the dank and dirty ground. But she’s smiling.

Because he’s hers, and she’s his. And they’re wrong, all wrong, but there’s something so perfect in that symmetry.

At the curb she raises her arm, hailing a cab.

She’s hasn’t even shut the door behind her when her phone buzzes in her bag. She fumbles and reaches for it, and when she sees the message on the screen she smiles.

Through the tears cascading down her face, she smiles.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by DandelionSunset (tumblr: dandelion-sunset)

Feeling like a ragdoll loose at the seams, Katniss slumps down on the sofa and flops over onto her side, draping an arm across her face with a groan. She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to escape into a black hole of apathy, of nothingness, to a place where Peeta Mellark doesn’t exist.

She hears his laughter, his whispers, his shouts of ecstasy and frustration. Tastes the salt of his skin and the sugar on his tongue. His scent lingers on the couch and on her clothes - reminding her of the woods after a springtime rainstorm; clean, earthy, invigorating. His lips are on her mouth, his breath on her neck, his hands caressing every inch of her body. He’s inside her, coursing through her, filling her heart, and clouding her mind.

Closing her eyes offers no relief; all she can see is the blue of his.

The room sways and blurs, attempting to right itself as she finally, grudgingly opens her eyes and adjusts her vision. Reaching for her phone on the coffee table, she curses herself for being so weak-willed. She’d reread his text probably a hundred times during the cab ride home, but she needs to read it again. Just once more. To reassure herself that it’s true? To muster up a final goodbye? She’s not entirely certain; all she knows is that it makes her heart sing and shatter at the same time.

_Peeta: The ONLY mistake would b giving up on us! i dont give a damn about ages or other women. I want U! ONLY U!! WE R NOT A MISTAKE!!!!!!!_

It’s followed by three emojis - a kiss, a hug, and a heart.

Sending such cutesy things right after fucking her in an alley almost seems absurd… but then it doesn’t. Because that’s what their relationship is: a perfect balance of pure and filthy, calm and wild, toeing a fine line between right and wrong.

It’s like nothing she’s ever experienced.

Her past relationships had been routine and mundane. With Gale it had gotten to the point where she could easily predict which day, along with the exact hour, they’d have sex - which wasn’t very often. Not that she minded much. He’d mostly just lie there and make her do all the work, finishing before she felt a single tinge of pleasure. It was more of a chore than anything resembling passion. The one before him was slightly more satisfying; it was never exactly mind-blowing, but at least they gave to each other equally. Even so, it’d still been just as predictable.

She never thought it could be like this.

Peeta has brought out a side of her she never knew existed.

And maybe _that’s_ the mistake.

Never mind their age difference, the threat of others coming between them, or the myriad of other uncertainties she has. The real problem is that this is way too good to last. They barely know each other, and yet she already feels more for him than men she’d dated for years. She’s never felt this alive before, nor more vulnerable. He holds her heart in the palm of his hand, and all she can do is wait until he eventually destroys it. It’s best to go with a quick death rather than a prolonged one. Because, until this ends, she’ll constantly be anticipating it.

She stares at his message, her mind a battlefield of conflicting thoughts. She wants to send him a reply, but has no idea what to say.

It’s probably best not to say anything at all.

With a heavy sigh, she tosses her phone back onto the table then flips over onto her back, pressing her palms against her eyelids to prevent herself from crying again.

Moments later, she’s startled by a knock at the door.

She assumes it’s probably one of the girls checking up on her. She left in a hurry, without saying a word to any of them. Madge texted her while she was in the cab, and she replied that she felt sick and decided to go home. She was wished to feel better soon, and that was that.

Sitting up with a scowl, she debates whether she wants to answer or not. Her face is a mess of dried tears and smeared makeup, and her inner thighs are still sticky from earlier. She doesn’t want _anyone_ seeing her like this.

As the knocks become louder and more persistent, however, Katniss realizes that they’re not going away. Finally, she stands and makes her way over, determined to make them leave as quickly as possible.

She opens the door and her heart plummets to her feet.

Peeta stands before her, clothes and hair disheveled. He doesn’t look pissed or confrontational, though. Just hurt. Due to his eyes being slightly bloodshot and puffy, she can tell he’d been crying. She quickly shifts her gaze to the floor, her gut twisting with guilt.

Neither of them speak for a moment, waiting for the other to be the first to break the silence.

“Here. You left these behind,” Peeta finally says, pulling her panties from his pocket and handing them over to her. She snatches them quickly and tosses them behind her.

“You came all the way here to return my underwear?” Katniss mumbles, knowing full well that he didn’t. She just wants him to get to the point, whatever it is, so he’ll leave and she can go back to mourning him.

“No,” he answers. “I came here because we need to talk about what happened.”

She closes her eyes and sighs loudly, squeezing the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger. “I’m exhausted, Peeta. And I really need to take a shower. We can talk about it tomorrow.”

He runs a hand through his hair and shakes his head, looking weary and impatient. She knows that if she lets him inside, she’ll give into him and he’ll wind up staying. Already, she feels her resolve dissipating. Her mind whispers ‘mistake’, but her body screams the opposite.

“I took a cab here, so I’ll have to call one to get home. Might as well make use of the time while I wait,” he tells her with a shrug. “Just a few minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”

He raises his eyebrows, awaiting her reply. She feels like a trapped animal. It doesn’t matter what she says. By his tone and demeanor, she knows he’s not going to take no for an answer. So, reluctantly, she gives a curt nod and finally stands back to let him enter.

***

He takes a seat beside her on the couch, his body leaning forward and his elbows resting on his knees. He runs a hand over his face, then finally looks over at her, frowning.

“You should’ve told me you were upset about the text this morning instead of acting like everything was fine. None of this would’ve happened.”

“It would’ve happened anyway,” she refutes, her voice quiet, “only sooner.”

“No, it wouldn’t have,” he asserts. “I would’ve called Glimmer right on the spot and told her I spent the night with you, enjoying the best sex of my life.”

“Whatever. I don’t believe that for one second,” she scoffs.

Sure, it was true for _her_ , but he didn’t have much for competition. He’s just trying to butter her up. Of all the girls he’s been with, there’s no way she comes close to being the best he’s ever had. She doubts she even registers as a top ten.

“What don’t you believe? The thing about calling Glimmer or what I said about last night?”

“Both,” she answers lifelessly, adding with a shrug, “mostly the latter.”

“Well, I’m telling the truth,” he insists, sitting back against the couch. He’s so close to her that their shoulders and thighs touch. She wishes she could move over to put some space between them, but her body is already snug against the armrest. “You know when you find a pair of pants that fit just right - not too loose, not too tight - like they’d been made just for you? That’s what it feels like when I’m inside you. You’re the perfect fit.”

She closes her eyes as he runs his knuckles down her arm, causing goosebumps to prickle her flesh.

She wants to believe his words, to delude herself into thinking she’s somehow special in contrast to every other girl he’s been with. But rationalization won’t allow it. After all, it doesn’t take much to find a pair of pants that fit you right. She has a closet full of them, none more favorable than the rest. Whether or not she’s 'the perfect fit’ for him, he could’ve tried on dozens before her that gave the same satisfaction. Ones that were brand new, without frayed edges or tears in the fabric.

It’d be so much simpler to give into the sweetness of his words and the splendor of his touch, to forget any of this ever happened and rewind things to the way they were, but instead she finds herself asking, “And how did Glimmer feel?”

Peeta sighs heavily and doesn’t say anything for a moment, which seems to confirm every suspicion she has. She stares down at her hands, unable to stop wringing them, feeling his eyes burning holes into her skin.

He places his hand on hers, stilling them with a gentle squeeze.

“Look, I’m going to be completely honest with you, Katniss,” he begins, sounding far too grave and way too guilty. She knows she doesn’t want to hear what he’s going to say. She doesn’t want his honesty, not if it’s going to hurt. “If this is going to work between us, we need to communicate instead of bottling things up and letting them explode. If you want to know anything, ask me. I’m an open book. Do you _really_ want to know how it felt with Glimmer?”

Katniss cuts her eyes at him, ripping her hands away from his. She shakes her head but doesn’t speak, knowing that something vicious would burst out in an attempt to make him feel as hurt as she does.

“Well, I’m going to answer anyway. In fact, I’m going to tell you everything,” he declares as she crosses her arms and glares down at her lap. “I was only with her _one_ time, months ago. And it was the worst experience I’ve ever had–”

“I thought we were being honest with each other?” she mutters, her voice dripping with derision.

“I _am_ being honest,” Peeta counters, but she’s not hearing it. She begins to stand, planning to lock herself in the bathroom until he leaves, but only gets halfway up before he places a hand on her shoulder and pulls her back down beside him. “Just hear me out? Please?”

She closes her eyes and purses her lips, her entire body trembling. He can talk all he wants, but she doesn’t have to respond or listen to his bullshit.

“She sent a text asking me to come over. She’d just gone through a breakup and said she needed a friend to talk to,” he begins to explain. “We’d been working together for a few months, and we got along okay. We were never friends, really… more like friendly acquaintances. But I went to her house anyway. I figured if she was desperate enough to call me of all people, she must be feeling pretty lousy. When I got there, though…” He sighs and shakes his head as if it pains him to relive the memory.

Katniss looks straight ahead, trying to keep her face passive, intent on giving him the silent treatment until he gives up and goes home. He doesn’t take the hint. Instead, he goes on with his story of how he fucked Glimmer, as if that’s supposed to make her feel better somehow. She doesn’t understand his logic. What the hell does he think he’s going to achieve? She’s only getting more pissed off by the second. Is he _trying_ to be cruel?

“God, it was a _disaster_. She didn’t say anything, just led me to her bedroom, opened a drawer then tossed a condom at me. She’d obviously been drinking, so I told her I didn’t think it was a good idea. That it didn’t feel right. She yelled that I was being an asshole, started crying, saying that no man would ever want her, she was worthless. I wasn’t attracted to her, but I felt sorry–”

“Don’t lie! She’s hot. There’s no fucking way you’re not attracted to her,” Katniss cuts him off, rolling her eyes.

“She’s pretty, but she’s not my type at all. I’ve always had a strong preference for brunettes,” he shrugs, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. His knuckles graze her cheekbone and she fights the urge to slap it away, hating how such a simple touch from him can make her entire body shiver.

“Whatever. Don’t tell me it was a pity fuck. I’m not stupid.”

“That’s basically what it was, though,” he contends. “It was awful. She didn’t respond to anything I did… just laid there, sobbing occasionally, telling me not to do certain things that her ex would do. I kept getting soft, so I closed my eyes and blocked her out, trying to get it over with as quick as possible. I got my wish a few minutes into it when she puked everywhere.” He groans and rakes his hand over his face. “I got dressed and ran out. We never spoke about it again. I think we both wanted to forget it ever happened.”

From the total disgust on his face and in his voice, she’s inclined to believe him. The story itself might be true, but she has doubts about the rest. She’d seen them together at the Hob, how she’d been rubbing her ass on him… and he’d just _stood_ there and allowed it. And if nothing more happened between them after that, if nothing was going on now, why the hell would she be sending him texts with winks and calling him 'babe’? It doesn’t add up.

“Then why’d she send you that text?” she asks, trying to keep her voice even.

“I really don’t know.” He runs a hand through his hair and releases a loud breath. “Actually, I have a pretty good guess….”

She arches an eyebrow at him, wanting to hear something that makes sense, something more than a vague 'I don’t know’.

“I was telling my friends about you at work. I guess she overheard,” he shrugs, suddenly looking sheepish. She frowns, wondering what exactly he’d been saying about her that would make him avoid her eyes. “When I bought the baking supplies yesterday, I went through her check out. She asked me to hang out with her after work, but I told her I already had plans with my girlfriend. She didn’t say anything else. I shrugged it off. I had more important things on my mind.”

“Why’d you go out with her tonight?”

“I _didn’t_ go with her. She just showed up.”

“Well, whatever the case, you both seemed to be having a great time together,” she remarks, unable to keep the bitterness out of her tone.

“I only agreed to go out tonight because I wanted to introduce you to my friends. But you said were _exhausted_ so I didn’t push the issue,” he returns. “And I don’t know what you _think_ you saw, but I wasn’t enjoying myself. Glimmer was drunk and just started dancing on me. I don’t know. I wasn’t feeling it. And that’s about the time you showed up. That’s _all_ that happened.”

By the way his jaw is tensing and the tremor in his voice, she knows he’s beginning to lose all semblance of patience. She wants to believe him. She thinks she does. But she’s looking for something else… something that’ll kill all her doubts. She’s looking for the impossible.

“How do I know you’re not just telling me things I want to hear?” she asks, but this time there’s no heat behind her words. It’s more of a question to herself than him.

She’d been through this before. Been lied to, cheated on, promised it wouldn’t happen again, and she was naive enough to believe it. She knows she’s being unfair; he’s probably telling the truth. _He’s_ not _him_. Not even close. But he’s young and he’s hot, and even if they were the same age, he’d still be out of her league. He could have anyone. Why her?

He groans in frustration and moves forward, placing his head in his hands. For a moment, she thinks he’s going to leave, that he’s finally giving up. Instead of relief, all she feels is remorse. She fights the urge to wrap her arms around him and tell him she’s sorry about everything, that she’s being paranoid and insecure and he did nothing wrong. But she can’t afford that vulnerability. It’s been used against her before. And if Peeta’s so quick to give up on her, she might as well let him.

He doesn’t leave, though.

Instead, he turns his body towards hers, his expression forthright and indignant.

“If you don’t believe me, ask my friends! They know everything about it,” he challenges fervently. With a shrug, he takes his cell from his pocket and holds it out to her, his hand shaking. “While you’re at it, ask them what I’ve said about you! I talk about you so much they’re probably sick of it. Even before I started coming over, I’d always tell them how much I was into you. I didn’t think you’d go for me, but they convinced me it was worth a chance. And it was… _it is_. I want to be with you. So trust me, okay? I’m not going to fuck this up.”

Biting her lip, her eyes brimming with tears, she stares down at the phone in her hand. Peeta’s home screen is a picture of the two of them, taken a couple days after he began coming over. They’re sitting on the couch, his arm around her, her head resting against his chest, and they’re smiling like they’ve never been happier.

She misses that; the simplicity. No expectations, no worries… just the joy of being together. Everything was perfect. Up until the text that spiraled her to doubt it, _they_ were perfect.

She’s made a huge mistake.

Placing the phone beside her, she rests her elbows on her knees and buries her face in her hands with a groan.

“Everything about tonight was a disaster,” she laments, her tone apologetic and lined with regret.

She’s surprised when Peeta moves closer and wraps his arms around her. He kisses the top of her head, then leans his forehead against her temple. She doesn’t feel like she deserves his kindness, but she’ll accept it.

“I wouldn’t say _everything_ ,” he murmurs softly, reassuringly. The vibration of his voice travels through her body as he adds lowly near her ear, “The bit before you left was pretty damn amazing.”

She gives a small nod of agreement, her face heating up. She’d never done anything like that before. In fact, before tonight, she’d never had sex outside of a bedroom.

“God, I hope no one saw us. I don’t think I’ll be showing my face at the Hob for a while,” she cringes.

“I think we’re fine. It was dark and we didn’t make much noise.” His body stiffens all of a sudden. “I, uh… I didn’t use a condom, though. Should we be worried…?”

“No. I’m on birth control,” she reassures and he relaxes again. “We’re good.”

“Are we?” he asks quietly, hesitantly, his hand caressing her upper arm.

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she leans back and tells him with an air of finality, “I really need to take a shower.”

He frowns, taking his arms from around her, then picks up his phone.

“Sure,” he shrugs dejectedly. “I’ll go ahead and call a–”

She places her hand on his, stopping him. He looks up at her, searching her face with a mixture of confusion, longing, and hope.

“Stay with me?” she whispers.

His lips curve into a smile that warms her like the sun.

He nods. “Always.”

***

Water hits her back as she works his hair into a thick cloud of bubbles, wondering how he can look so innocent and wicked at the same time. His eyes search hers, ravenous and unwavering, asking only one thing: _when_?

Her lips quirking into a smirk, her brows raised chidingly, she answers him with her own eyes: _soon_.

They’ve been in here for a while now. He’s already lathered her entire body, slowly, deliberately, the loofah in his hands lingering and giving extra attention to certain parts. She’d done the same to him. With his hands, his eyes, his mouth, he’s asked her the same question dozens of times, but her answer is always the same. _Soon_.

He’s growing impatient now, frustrated, his eyes plead with her to finally let him out of his misery. Her gaze falls from his face, travelling the chiseled contours of his body. Rivulets of water cascade down his chest and abs, captivating her, tempting her to lick and kiss them all away.

And so she does.

Switching places with him so he can wash the soap from his hair, his body tenses as she begins to devour him. Her lips and tongue move lower and lower, wanting to taste every inch of his skin, until finally, she’s on her knees. She pulls back to look up at him. His eyes beg her to kiss him where it’s needed, the only place her mouth has meticulously, teasingly evaded. With an impish grin, she nods once, giving him the answer he wants.

His groan, loud and gutteral, reverberates off the tile walls as she wraps her lips around his swollen tip, swirling it with her tongue. His hands fly to her head, urging her to go further. Instead, she steals her mouth away, opting to plant slow, lingering kisses down his shaft before licking her way back up. She gazes up at him as she takes him into her mouth again - fully this time. He thanks her with his eyes before closing them, his head falling back as she begins to go faster.

She’s stopped only a moment later, however, as he places his hands on her shoulders and steps back. Before she can ask why, he pulls her up and crashes his lips against hers. She responds in kind by wrapping her arms around his neck and deepening their kiss. He cups her ass in his palms, his mouth swallowing her gasp as he gives it a quick squeeze.

Grinning against her lips, he lifts her up effortlessly, as if she’s as light as a feather, bringing her legs around his waist. She locks her ankles behind him, clinging to his body, ready to feel him inside her. He obliges only a second later, their moans echoing in unison as their bodies finally unite.

Their kisses become as frenzied and erratic as their rhythm below. Her hips buck against him, trying to meet his feral tempo, until her back hits the cold tile wall. Using it for leverage, he moves a hand between their bodies and begins to rub her clit. She cries out, encouraging him to continue.

Giving one last powerful thrust, however, he suddenly lowers her until her feet touch the shower floor. She leans her head back, looking up at him in question, trying her best not to show her disappointment. Surely that wasn’t it? She knows it can’t be stellar every single time, but she was _so close_ ….

A corner of his mouth turns up, giving her a puckish half grin. No, they’re not done. Of course they’re not. In one swift motion, he turns her around, his hands gripping her hips. She braces herself against the wall as he enters her from behind.

He’s slow at first, watching himself slide in and out of her, but she quickly grows impatient. She moves against him, desperate for friction, wanting him take control again and bring her to completion.

With a playful smack to her ass, he gives what she desires.

The slapping of their flesh resonates, their moans filling the air around them like an erotic song. Slamming into her, his fingers dig into her hips until they move up to cup her breasts. He then pulls her toward him, bringing her back against his chest. While one hand remains on her breast, squeezing and caressing, the other moves between her legs. She leans her head to the side, giving him all the access he wants as he lavishes her shoulder and neck with open-mouthed kisses.

She meets his thrusts, his fingers working their magic below, and finally - _finally_ \- she reaches her peak. Spreading from her center, down her legs and arms, into every toe and fingertip, he holds her to him as she bucks against the waves of her orgasm.

He follows only seconds later.

She turns around and rests her head against his chest, sheathed in his arms. The water is cold, but neither seem to mind. They just stand there for a moment, silent and blissful as they catch their breath.

No, this is not a mistake.

It’s perfection.

***

She wakes to someone pounding on the front door.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she buries her face into Peeta’s chest, not wanting to leave the comfort of his arms. She just wants to stay like this, warm and content, for as long as she can. The rest of the world can wait.

“You should probably get that,” he whispers.

She groans and shakes her head in protest, but as the knocks persist, she finally gives in.

Grudgingly, she wraps her naked body in a housecoat, telling Peeta to stay where he is because she’ll be back, then leaves the room.

She stomps to the door and yanks it open, ready to tell whoever it is to piss off. It’s not even 8 AM yet.

However, when she sees who’s standing there, she finds herself speechless. Her eyes widen and she’s hit with both dread and delight.

“Surprise!” Prim greets brightly before bringing her into a tight embrace. “I’ve missed you so much! I have two weeks off for vacation. We have so much to catch up on!”


	15. **Outtake: The Thong Song**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by papofglencoe
> 
> A few of you beautiful souls inspired me to write an outtake of the Target!drabble told from the POV of Katniss’ discarded underwear. And here it is. This outtake begins with Katniss’ friends showing up to take her out to the Hob and ends… well… you know. Readers can skip to the next chapter if they'd like, but this chapter does contain a little easter egg. <3
> 
> For @katamount and @jennagill

There is a piercing, blinding light and the sensation of strange fingers curling around me. They clutch and grip and crush me, and as soon as I hear the voice, I know who’s taken me.

It’s not _her_. It’s one of her friends, the one she calls “Johanna” or, when she’s feeling feisty, “asshole” or “cunt,” but when she says these things she doesn’t mean them, not really— not in the way I do, anyway.

“Here, Everdeen,” says the one called Johanna, plucking me from the drawer and tossing me through the air until it’s Katniss’ hands that clasp me to her chest. “If those don’t get you fucked, then nothing will.” The abrasive voice reaches me even where I rest, smothered in a ball, cradled against the warmth of Katniss’ breasts.

Katniss groans, the sound a distinct cross between embarrassment and annoyance. “Jo, I don’t think that the underwear I wear will make any earthly difference—”

“It will,” the one called Annie says, her voice earnest and sweet. “It really will. It will boost your confidence.”

“Ha!” Johanna hoots like she’s just won a wet t-shirt contest. “Ya hear that, Everdeen? Even Little Miss Orphan Annie agrees: no granny panties for you. Tonight you’re playing Dick Hunt, and you’ve got to feel fuckable when you’re playing or the boys ain’t gonna play.”

“You’re revolting!” Katniss protests, but I can feel her race pulsing through the skin of her palm, and I know she’s going to cave.

Katniss rests me on her comforter, and from this vantage I can see Johanna walk over to the closet, can hear the mirrored door squeal on its rusty track as she slides it open.

“Oh God— oh Christ— _Jesusfuckme_ , Katniss. It looks like your closet barfed up business casual.” Johanna rustles through Katniss’ garments, oblivious to the feelings of the skirts, button up blouses, and smart-but-sensible sweaters that she casts aside like they’re worth nothing at all. “Tell me, Katniss, exactly when you traded in your vagina for a smooth patch.”

Katniss flushes a furious shade of red and scowls at the she-beast tearing apart her closet. “Jo, it’s called ‘being gainfully employed.’ And it’s got nothing to do with whether or not I still have a vagina.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” her friend mutters under her breath, scraping the hangers noisily along the rack as she searches through the clothes.

Katniss doesn’t seem to hear her, or at least she pretends not to. But I do. And, as loathe as I am to agree with anything Johanna has to say, it’s been far too long since Katniss has bothered to wear me.

Maybe the she-beast has a point.

With a rowdy “a-ha!” Johanna rips a silver dress from one of the hangers and holds it out in front of her, a wicked grin crawling onto her face. “Well, lookie here. The old girl’s got some freak left in her.”

Annie and the one called Madge converge on Johanna, each looking more pleased than the next. Their faces beam as they appraise the dress, their eyes alternating between Katniss and the dress as if to decide how one could possibly have any relation to the other.

Madge reaches inside the dress and pulls out a price tag, still attached. She frowns as she looks at it. “Why haven’t you ever worn this?” There’s nothing malicious in the question, and I’m thankful Katniss doesn’t take it the wrong way.

…Because I’d really, _really_ like to spend time with her tonight in that silver dress, and that ain’t gonna happen if she gets pissed at her friends.

Katniss shrugs. “I bought it when I was dating David, when I thought he was going to propose… and then after… _what happened_ … I just came to associate it with him, I guess. So in the closet it stayed.”

Johanna grimaces and begins to shove the dress back in the closet, but Katniss practically leaps off the bed in protest. “No, no… don’t put it back.” She sounds so determined, suddenly, as if some thought has occurred to her. “I’ll wear it.”

I can’t help but notice the knowing look Annie shoots at Katniss. If she knows Katniss half as well as I do— which, okay let’s be honest, she probably doesn’t— then she has to be wondering why Katniss is suddenly able to face this particular demon.

I think it must be because of _him_ , the one I’d heard the night before— groaning and moaning and panting her name. He’s a loud one, which is kind of annoying when I’m tucked in for the night and hoping to catch some beauty rest.

His name is either “ _Oh god_ ” or “ _Peeee-tahhhhh_.”

I’m not sure how I feel about him yet.

Katniss takes the dress from Johanna, refusing to meet her friends’ eyes, and then picks me up and takes me with her into the bathroom. She drops me onto the cold tile, just a couple inches shy of the soft, plush bath mat. It’s moments like these I’d love nothing more than to give her a piece of my fucking mind. ( _A little consideration is all I’m asking for when I spend my day literally covering her ass… well, maybe not her_ ass _, but other precious cargo_ ).

Through the open door, I can hear Madge. “It’s old school night at the Hob, and they’ve got well drinks for four bucks, so we’re thinking about hitting that up. Sound good to you, Kat?”

Katniss slides me up her legs, one, delicious leg at a time, and I lose myself in the sensation of her smooth skin caressing my fabric. It feels like heaven, how I fit around her so perfectly, cupping her sex like I was made for her.

“Yeah, sounds great,” Katniss mutters, trying her best to sound enthusiastic. “I honestly don’t care where we go.” She slides the dress over her head, the fabric falling just below her ass, and then all I can see is her feet, the way she anxiously, absentmindedly scratches at her left ankle with the big toe of her right foot. Over and over, she scratches, like her skin is crawling off her body. She’s not used to wearing me— or dresses this short— and I think she must be uncomfortable at how exposed she is. But I can tell that she’s trying to resist how the dress and I make her feel.

The one named Annie comes into the bathroom and stands behind Katniss. Her voice is, like always, quiet and patient. “Something is definitely up with you,” she says, the sound of Katniss’ zipper punctuating her words as she zips up her friend’s dress. “No— _someone_. And when you’re ready, you’re going to have to tell me who that someone is.”

I can feel Katniss tense up, but she doesn’t reply.

The next hour is a fog of preparations and fussing, the constant prattle of Katniss’ friends as they pluck and paint and perfume every last inch of her. I can tell she’s anxious; her temperature is raised, and the heat from her body radiates into me, making me delirious.

Finally, after what seems like days, she moves into the refreshing night, sliding onto the cool leather of Johanna’s car seat, and when the bare skin of her ass touches it, she hisses and crosses her legs to conceal a secret only I know.

Her secret?

Tonight Katniss Everdeen feels sexy and alive.

As we enter the club, I’m rendered blind and deaf by the low lights and thumping bass. I don’t know where we’re going or who we’re with, but Katniss starts to drink.

And drink.

And then she drinks some more.

She starts to dance, and when she moves, I move too. Her slender thighs and curves rub against my fabric sensually, agonizingly, but it isn’t long before her body comes to a halt.

The music is droning on, some man talking about how he loves big butts and he cannot lie (a sentiment I happen to share), when I feel it— the warmth and wetness of her arousal.

It happens suddenly, and I can feel her arms knock in frustration at her sides, her fingers mindlessly worrying the fabric of her dress, as she fights an unwinnable battle.

I think it must be him— her lover, this _Peeta_ — that she sees.

There’s nothing worse than knowing someone, loving someone, existing for someone, and not being able to protect them. But you can’t protect anyone in this world.

Especially when you’re a pair of panties.

I don’t know what this “Peeta” looks like, I can’t discern his intentions. Right now I can’t even hear him. All I know, all I _intimately_ know, is how Katniss responds to him. Maybe I know this better than she does herself.

At just the sight of him, her body comes to life.

The next few minutes are an overload of feelings I don’t have the time or ability to process. All I know is this:

Her pulse rages, her temperature rises, and just when I’m certain that she’s going to pass out and take me down with her, I feel something inside of her burn up and disintegrate to ash.

She runs away, and as she crashes into the street, I can see the cracked pavement glowing orange from the light of the street lamps. She’s crying, her entire body racked with sobs, and over the din of the people on the street I can hear her gasping for breath. She grows chill in the night air, and when she shivers I shiver, too.

She’s heartsick over him.

I think I hate him for it.

But then I hear his voice.

I know it’s him, I recognize the way he says her name, how every letter is filled with urgency and desire. I know that feeling, the need for her warmth and closeness, and it’s the way he’s speaking to her, begging her, that makes me think I’ve underestimated him after all.

She’s a difficult, headstrong girl. I know this about her. Her neglect of me tells me something fundamental: she doesn’t let anyone get too close. She protects herself with reasons and justifications and shabby excuses why she deserves to be alone— and will always be that way. She keeps the world at arm’s length. Anything that could lead to intimacy she casts aside in some masochistic, misguided form of self-preservation.

Every day that Katniss passes me over for a more sensible pair of panties— the Old Bitties, as I like to call them— it reaffirms something else I know about her: she rejects the frivolous and ostentatious for the simple and true. In the battle between show and comfort, the latter always wins.

And the way her body responds to him, even as they fight and he curses and she curses back, makes me think that he’s as natural and right a fit for her as any of her favorite clothes. She may be crying and trembling, but when he touches her, her pulse thrums and her clit throbs, and, in the time I’ve known her, no other man has had that effect on her.

That has to rate for something.

As they skirmish, an unfamiliar voice interrupts them, asking if she’s alright, and I can feel Katniss’ embarrassment, the way her entire body flushes at feeling so vulnerable and exposed. But the boy is sensible, even now.

He touches her— I know this because I can actually feel her aching for him— and he takes her somewhere dark and quiet to talk. His voice is low, nearly inaudible over the bass, but each decibel courses through her bloodstream anyway, travels through every vein and capillary until it suffuses her bloodstream. “If you want to ask me how many girls I’ve slept with, Katniss, that’s fair. I’ll tell you. But I think what you really need to know is how many I’ve slept with since the day I met you.”

When he tells her this I want to scream, “ _Ask him, motherfucker, just ask him_ ,” and I know her pussy does, too, but her pride won’t allow it. Her pulse hammers inside her body, and I think that his pulse must, too because when he speaks again he sounds furious.

“You won’t ask… And why’s that? Afraid you’ll hear something that might prove your idea of me wrong?”

I want to exalt to the heavens, to slap him a high five and then set myself on fire, because it is in this moment I know Katniss Everdeen has met her match.

And he loves her, I know he does. He murmurs to her body, “The answer is _one_. You. Only you. From the minute we met, it’s just been you.” He thinks this is a song he sings just for her. He can’t hear how every cell of her body sings it back to him, word for word and note for note. His words are an incantation summoning all her passion.

And she has so much passion.

Katniss fights it, she tries to stop him from saying what I know he wants to say— _needs_ to say— and she does what she does best: she pushes him away.

She lies to herself, she lies to her feet, she lies to the sky and to him and to everything and anything that will listen. She insults herself, she insults him. She pushes and bristles and fights because that’s what she does.

But she _wants_ , too, with every ounce of her being. She’s so wet for him that her need for him soaks me, drowns me. It’s suffocating to hunger for someone the way she’s hungering for him.

When he presses his body against hers, his warmth seeps into me, intoxicating me. His voice infects me like it infects her, and I’m useless against it, useless to protect her. I couldn’t if I wanted to.

He sees her for exactly who she is and calls her on her games. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing… It’s not fair. You’re not being fair. It’s not _fucking_ fair—”

Every syllable, every sound out of his mouth courses through her, and she reaches out and touches him to create a conduit for everything that’s mounting within her. It’s too much, too unbearably much. And I know she’s touching him because I can feel the hard, unrelenting press of Peeta’s cock against her body as he responds to her.

It doesn’t matter who’s talking anymore or what they’re trying to say, all that’s left is Katniss’ aching need and the way Peeta’s length feels grinding against me, grinding against her. Everything they’re saying is just words, words, words, empty placeholders for what was always going to happen anyway. They deny what they want. They elide the truth. But they take what they want and, in the taking, make a new truth.

He’s kissing her, and she’s throbbing, and he’s biting her, and she’s bucking, and when his hands skate below the hemline of her dress and hike it up over her ass, exposing me, I want to gasp with her, too. The night air is so cold it feels like fire on my wet fabric, and when his fingers begin to rub her they rub me, too.

I think I fall in love with his hands first.

They’re rough and callused, but his fingers are gentle and dexterous. They dance across her body, pressing and massaging and dipping, and what he’s doing feels so good I don’t even notice that its his hands that have ripped me down Katniss’s hips until I land in a pool around her ankles.

I fall to the ground, gasping and delirious, but before I can make sense of what’s happened, and why I’m suddenly so cold, I’m flying through the air.

I land several feet away from her— from them— between a smashed piece of chewing gum and a pile of cigarette butts. The ground here is mercifully dry, but the smell of the butts is nauseating.

As I collect my bearings I can see that Katniss’ leg is wound around Peeta’s hip, her arms snaked around his shoulders, and when both of her legs hook around his back, he reaches down to press his cock inside her. Every time his hips undulate she slides up against the wall, moaning and keening and pleading to her absent god. He kisses her, roughly, and swallows her frantic words, her senseless babble. Through his jeans I can see the muscles of his ass clench as he buries himself in her.

Her fingers grasp the tense muscles of his shoulders, and through the darkness, over the din of the music and their bodies colliding, in the distance between me and them, I can feel them fighting to hold onto each other. She cries and he groans, she wails and he grunts— their bodies finally speaking a language worth using.

They move together like this, a frantic dance to a bitter song, until she comes and he comes, too.

They’re panting and sweaty, and the air around them reeks of sex. He holds her to his chest, and I can practically hear everything he wants to say to her— his thoughts are so loud— but she does what she always does and pushes him away.

“That was—” he begins, his voice filled with awe.

“A mistake,” she tells him. A lie, as hollow and empty as the alleyway carrying their echoes.

She’s kisses him gently in goodbye.

And that’s when she leaves me.

There is a flickering, drowned light and the sensation of familiar fingers curling around me. They hold and stroke and caress me, and as soon as I hear the voice, I know who’s taken me.

“Look at you,” he says, his voice soft and kind. “You’re coming with me.”

It’s not _her_. It’s him. The one called Peeta.

He tucks me into the front pocket of his jeans, and as he walks down the alleyway and into the night, his fingers stay tangled in me.

I don’t know if he’s comforting me or if I’m comforting him.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By Everlylark

Katniss steps back as Prim comes bouncing through the front door. She reminds Katniss of a blonde tazmanian devil, all energy as she strides towards the kitchen. Katniss silently wonders exactly how much caffeine her loving sister has had this morning. 

 

“Oh Katniss, we have so much to catch up on. There’s so many new things to tell you. I’ve really missed you.” Katniss follows Prim to the kitchen where she starts to rummage through cabinets. “Don’t you have coffee in this place? I figured I could make some while you get ready, and we can go to breakfast? I really want to go to Sae’s. I’ve missed their french toast. We could probably be there by nine if you hurry.” Prim is talking forty-five miles per hour as as she continues to pull out drawers and open cabinets. 

 

“I don’t have coffee. There’s some tea in the cabinet next to the oven if you want. Look Prim, it’s not that I’m not happy to see you, because I am. But next time do you think you could call?” The sigh that leaves her mouth is long and hard. She doesn’t want to hurt Prim’s feelings, but damn if there isn’t one hot naked man in her bed probably hard and long and waiting for her. Katniss learned really quickly that younger does in fact mean more stamina. 

 

Prim’s eyes look up and down appraising Katniss’s attire. Her cornflower eyes get wide as the realization dawns on her. “Did I interrupt something? Were you actually getting some?” The disbelief on her face makes Katniss scowl. 

 

“Why would it be so hard for you to believe that maybe in fact I was. That’s ridiculous.” Katniss tries hard to hide the hurt in her voice as she speaks. The fact of the matter was that everyone in her life has become adjusted to the thought that she was well on her way to spinsterhood. There really hadn’t been too many guys since Gale, and none of them were long term. However, she can’t quite grasp why Prim couldn’t believe she may be getting laid. Raising her steel grey eyes to meet her sister’s blue, she begins again. “I’ve met someone. He’s uh, special to me.” 

 

Prim drops the mug and tea bag she had been holding on the counter. Taking 2 long strides, she is instantly at her sister’s side and wraps her arms around her. The sisters take a moment to embrace and breath each other deeply in. Looking around, Katniss notices that Prim has no luggage. 

 

“Prim, where’s your stuff? Aren’t you staying with me?” Katniss questions her sister. Prim gets a nervous look on her face and just as she opens her mouth, a voice interrupts her.

 

“Hey Katniss, everything ok?” The deep male voice that comes from behind them causes a jolt of electricity to run directly to Katniss’s core. Turning around she sees Peeta walking towards them wearing a white tee shirt and the jeans from the club that clung to his ass deliciously. His blonde hair is tousled and he looks relaxed and happy. Katniss takes a deep breath and looks over at Prim. Prim’s jaw is dropped and she is looking at Peeta like he’s a piece of meat. Damn straight, Katniss thinks.

 

“Yes, of course. Peeta, this is my sister Prim. Prim, this is my uhh boyfriend Peeta.” Katniss holds her breath for a moment and lifts her eyes to Peeta. The smile on his face could only be described as radiant. She has pretty much put it out there. They were together, and she was not afraid. They are doing this and moving forward. 

 

Peeta reaches out his hand towards Prim. She smiles up at him and shakes his hand delicately. The shock is still evident on her face. “It’s so nice to meet you Prim. I’ve heard so much about you.” Peeta drops Prim’s hand and wraps his arm around Katniss. Pressing a kiss onto her forehead, he lets her go and makes his way towards the sink. “I’ll start some tea. Katniss, do you want that new blend I got last week?” Peeta smiles to himself as he starts the tea. When she dares to look over at Prim, she sees that her jaw is still dropped. As if she suddenly snaps to, she grabs Katniss by the elbow. 

 

“ Uh Peeta? Would you excuse us for a moment?” Prim begins to drag Katniss into the living room. 

 

“That was rude Prim. You didn’t even say hello.” The scowl on Katniss’s face is deep and she is furious. “Yes Peeta, I’d love some tea. Thank you!” She yells into the kitchen. Turning her attention to her sister, she hisses out low and long. “What the fuck is your problem?”

 

“How old is he Katniss?” Although Prim got her mother’s blue eyes, they both got the intensity from their father. “I never thought you’d be one to rob the cradle.” 

 

“What does it matter? Why the hell are you judging me? I’m happy Prim. Really truly happy. So get off your damn high horse.” Katniss begins to relax when she sees Prim’s face drop. 

 

“You are right. I don’t have any place to judge you. The reason I don’t have any luggage is that it’s all back in the hotel room. Where my boyfriend is. My older boyfriend. Much older boyfriend. I was hoping to break it to you over coffee this morning and then meet him for breakfast.” Prim is looking everywhere but at Katniss. 

 

Letting out another sigh, Katniss looks at her sister. “I’d love to meet him for breakfast. I’ll bring Peeta. We might as well tackle all of this in one morning.” In her head Katniss is silently screaming. An older guy? For Prim? “Just so I’m aware, and I’m not judging, how much older is older?” Prim may be 24 and able to make her own decisions, but Katniss wants to know exactly what she is dealing with. 

 

Prim’s face lights up as she looks at her sister. “I’ll tell you how old he is, if you tell me how old that stud muffin in the kitchen is.” 

 

“20.” Katniss whispers. 

 

“I’m sorry, did you just say 20? He can’t legally drink?” Prim’s voice is stuttering a bit and Katniss can tell that she is desperately trying not to outright laugh. “But damn is he one fine looking 20.” The blush rises to Katniss’s cheeks. 

 

“He turns 21 soon ok? Now, out with it. How old is mystery man?” Katniss smiles as she asks. The whole insanity of this situation is beginning to dawn on her. 

 

“Almost 32.” Prim bursts out laughing. “We should probably switch boyfriends.” The laugh that pours out of Katniss’s mouth is comfortable and happy. For the first time this morning, she feels as though she can relax and just enjoy her sister’s company. The tea kettle goes off in the background, and Katniss knows Peeta will probably bring her the tea momentarily. 

 

“I should probably shower and get ready, also let Peeta know the game plan.” Katniss tells her. Thinking about showering brings her right back to last night, and when she was on her knees. Her core aches just thinking about it, and she seriously contemplates how horrible it is to shove Peeta back in the shower while Prim is waiting for them. 

 

“Earth to Katniss. Hey. I was talking to you. Where did you go?” Katniss is suddenly aware of Prim’s snapping fingers in front of her face. “Oh I know that face. You climbed him like a tree last night didn’t you?”

 

The blush crept up Katniss’s face even further. “Fuck Prim.” She waves her hand towards the kitchen in a gesture to show that Peeta is close. She drops her voice to a whisper. “Hell yes. Wouldn’t you?” 

 

Just then Peeta appears through the kitchen door. “Wouldn’t you what?” Peeta smiles at Katniss as he hands her a fresh cup of tea. 

 

The blush that had crept up Katniss’s face turns tomato red. “Uh nothing. Hey, so Prim would like for us to meet her new boyfriend for breakfast. Sound good?” Katniss places the tea on the table and begins to stand.

 

“Absolutely. I think I still have that shirt I left here last time, so I won’t be looking walk of shame-ish in the same outfit.” Peeta looks at Katniss and sends a wink her way. Katniss makes eye contact with him and smiles brightly. Prim thinks that it’s the first time she has seen a smile that bright on Katniss in a while. She actually doesn’t even think she smiled like that with he who had a small dick. 

 

“Ok great. I’m going to hop in the shower and then we can get going. Can you two not kill each other while I’m there?” Katniss gestures to Prim as a warning. 

 

“I’ll be on my best behavior with your boy-toy cougar lady.” Prim grins and reaches down for Katniss’s tea. She doesn’t even try to hide the smirk on her face as Katniss scowls her way. “Are you scowling at me because I’m drinking your tea or I called you a cougar?” Prim barely gets through the last word when she bursts out in laughter. 

 

Katniss rolls her eyes at Prim and sees that Peeta has a huge shit-eating grin on his face. She walks out of the room and disappears down the hallway to her bathroom. 

 

Prim takes a moment to sip her tea and then she turns to Peeta. 

 

“She looks the happiest I’ve seen in years, and thoroughly fucked none the less. Make no mistake about it baby cub. You fuck her over, I’ll fuck you up.” Prim tries her best to make her face serious. When she looks at Peeta she can tell the warning is not needed. 

 

“Warning heeded. I need to tell you though. This is not a fling for me. This is the real deal. I know I’m younger than her, but trust me when I say, she is without a doubt the best thing that has happened to me. I have no intentions of hurting her or letting her go.” Taking a deep breath, he continues on. “I’m going to fuck up. I’m not really sure I’m always going to be the guy she deserves, but I’m damn well going to try every single day.” Peeta finishes and looks at Prim. All he sees in her cornflower blue eyes is approval. 

 

“Well now that we’ve gotten that out of the way. Tell me about yourself.” Prim sat back and sips her tea as she listens to Peeta talk about college and his job as they wait for Katniss. 

 

After about twenty minutes, Katniss appears fully dressed in skinny jeans and an off the shoulder shirt. She leans down to kiss Peeta gently on the cheek. “Well no one is dead, so I’ll take that as a good sign.” 

 

“Everyone is in one piece. I’m going to just go change my shirt and we can head out.” Peeta heads the same way Katniss just came from and disappears. 

 

As Katniss throws on her shoes, she looks over at Prim. “I can’t wait to meet your guy. What's his name?” 

 

Just as Prim opens her mouth to speak, Peeta makes his appearance known. “Hey. I’m all set. Where are we going?” 

 

“Sae’s. Prim wants the french toast. It’s not a far walk.” Katniss answers him. She looks at Prim, and grabs her bag. “Alright, let’s go meet this handsome older man that has stolen my baby sister’s heart.” Katniss blows Prim an air kiss. 

 

The walk to Sae’s takes only a few minutes through the busy city streets. As they walk through the front door of the busy diner, Prim rushes to the corner booth where a tall blonde man sits. He stands up to hug Prim tightly and turns to greet everyone. 

 

Prim looks over at Peeta and can see the shock written all over his face. She then looks at Katniss who is also starting a Peeta with a puzzled look on her face. 

 

“Katniss, Peeta, I’d like for you to meet my boyfriend…” Prim is interrupted by Peeta’s voice. 

 

“Rye.” Peeta reaches over to pull the blond man into a hug. Both men are smiling wide as Katniss is staring at Prim with an extremely confused look on her face. Peeta turns to face Katniss and Prim.

 

“Katniss, I’d like you to meet my big brother Rye. Rye, this is my girlfriend Katniss.” 

  
  
  



	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by papofglencoe

Legs…

… _What are those again_?

Katniss can’t seem to remember what the leaden stumps attached to her body are or what purpose they serve. She sinks heavily onto the edge of the cracked vinyl booth, searching for words through the static suddenly jamming her brain. Sae’s is crowded, bustling with morning diners who are laughing and chatting or catching up on the news, but as she looks around she can’t hear them. Their mouths move, their teeth flash in the bright sunlight streaming in through the windows, but all she can hear is a wall of white noise.

Shock.

It comes to her in an epiphany, and yes, that seems to be the word to describe this feeling that is not a feeling.

Peeta makes as if to sit, nudging her hip with his to encourage her to move over for him. She scooches in, going through the motions even though they lack all meaning.

_I sit like this. I rest my elbows on the table like this. I cross my hands like this. A human behaves like this_.

She doesn’t realize how tense she is, her shoulders arched like the back of a hissing cat, until a heavy weight falls around them, drawing her back.

Peeta.

She exhales and sinks into the hollow of his arm, silently asking him to support her body. He’s warm and relaxed, and the gentle, repetitive motion of his hand drawing light circles on her upper arm reminds her: _He’s here. We’re here. Together_.

His touch calls her back to the present, to the reality that is literally facing her: her sister is fucking her boyfriend’s brother.

Or is she fucking _her_ sister’s boyfriend’s brother?

Prim seems to be wrestling with the same questions; her mouth, known for its never-ending stream of witty retorts and pithy observations, is glued shut in a thin line. Katniss can see the gears in her brain spinning in overdrive, the steam practically billowing from her ears. As sisters, they’ve always been close, but when it comes to their love lives, they’ve existed in separate spheres. They’ve never even gone out on a double date together before. Talking about their love lives is one thing; this feels too close to sharing the same one.

What’s worse than this though— the vexation Katniss shares with her sister— is that the two brothers look happier than pigs in shit.

They sit across from each other, smiling and chatting as if this isn’t the most Beverly Hillbillies-clusterfuck-coincidence of a situation. It makes her wonder how many other sisters these two brothers happened to have slept with at the same time.

Or maybe this is just normal where they’re from... wherever that is.

As sense returns to her, she takes a moment to analyze her feelings. For some reason Katniss is irrationally angry at her sister, as though Prim should have somehow known better than to entangle herself with Peeta’s family. It’s completely unfair, and she knows it, but the resentment still courses through her because for the first time since— maybe _ever_ — she’s with someone who makes absolute sense to her, and Prim suddenly inserting herself into his world— _their_ private world— in a way she can’t control makes everything topsy turvy. Messy. It dredges up doubts and insecurities that had long lain dormant, that she thought had died along with their parents.

Some woman asks in a strangled voice, “So how did you two meet?” It takes a moment for her to sort through the dissonance between herself and her world and to realize that she’s the one who has asked the question. Katniss isn’t looking at her sister— she can’t without wanting to scream— so she asks the man across from her boyfriend instead.

At the sound of her voice Rye falls silent, his hands folded as if in casual prayer on the table in front of him. His eyes meet hers, and when they do she notices that they aren’t warm like Peeta’s. They’re so pale they’re more like the hint of blue, the color of a cloud or a bubble, something aqueous and ephemeral. As he looks at her, she feels sized up, measured, inventoried, shelved. He appraises her like a gambler sizes up a horse on race day. ‘ _How sure of a bet are you_?’ his eyes ask. ‘ _Where do you place_?’

There’s no doubt that the two men at the table are related, although the twelve-year age gap between them is obvious. They have the same ashy blond hair, but prematurely gray strands pepper Rye’s temples, pale silver threads interwoven among all the gold. He has the same square jaw, the same broad shoulders, the same faded freckles— but the constellations are all wrong, their placement too accidental, too haphazard, not at all perfectly arrayed like Peeta’s.

He smiles at her, an easy expression. When the smile reaches his eyes, they crinkle at well-worn corners, a sure sign that they come cheaply to him. He laughs— a sound that is more careless than carefree. “Well, at the risk of violating doctor-patient confidentiality, this little lady is my physician.” He slings his arm around Prim, his posture mirroring Peeta’s, and waggles his eyebrows at her sister.

“I'm just his chiropractor,” Prim corrects, looking at Peeta as she speaks. She shoots Rye a fleeting look that can only be described as doting. It makes Katniss’ stomach lurch.

_Shit. This is serious_.

“Hey, chiropractors are doctors too,” he grins, arching an eyebrow knowingly at Katniss for corroboration. He’s a quick read of character, Katniss realizes, or otherwise Prim has told him how proud her big sister is of her achievements.

Either way, she gives him the answer he’s looking for, tipping her head once in acknowledgement but remaining silent, eager for them to continue the tale. She’s inordinately proud of her sister and all that she has accomplished in such a short time. But she fucking needs Rye to keep talking.

“Anyway,” he continues, “I threw my back out unloading flour from the truck and—”

“He owns a bakery,” Prim interjects, this time looking at Katniss to explain. As if Katniss didn’t know her boyfriend’s family runs a bakery (she refuses to admit to herself that she barely knows this much about Peeta).

“Well, co-owns… it’s the family bakery.” Rye pauses to flip open a menu with his free hand, a nonverbal suggestion that the others do the same.

As she peruses the breakfast selection, trying to concentrate on the conversation, Katniss can hear the playful smirk in Peeta’s voice. “Throwing your back out on a sack of flour… never thought I’d live to see the day the mighty Rye Mellark was felled by a bag of wheat.”

“Well, dickwad,” Rye says, his voice lacking all malice, “As your girl can probably tell you, as you get older it all goes downhill real fast. It's like you hit thirty and your body starts to self-destruct.” He flips one of the laminated pages of the menu with one finger, the page snapping as it turns. If he hears Katniss’ startled cough, he doesn’t show it, instead ruminating to himself, “Eggs benedict or a short stack, that is the question.”

Katniss focuses on the words in front of her, on the warmth of Peeta’s hand as it falls to her thigh and squeezes, begging her to ignore his brother’s faux pas.

“Easy, Chewie,” he chuckles under his breath to her.

Katniss clears her throat. She tries not to sound annoyed as she prods Rye for more information, but something about him makes that incredibly difficult for her. She’s never had a big brother. If the irritation she feels in his presence is indicative of what it’s like to have one, she doesn’t think she cares for it.

“So you threw out your back and Prim’s magical hands cured you, huh? And now it’s happily ever after?” she muses. There’s a veiled threat there and she knows it, and, what’s more, Rye does, too.

He looks up from the menu, that obnoxiously feckless grin, the one that might actually inspire Katniss to commit an act of violence, still plastered on his face. “Well,” he answers, his tone laden with meaning, “if you had the opportunity to have a pair of magical hands live with you, wouldn’t you take it?” He squeezes his eyes shut and claws at them with one hand while he laughs. Katniss notices his complexion flushes as easily as Peeta’s. “No! Forget it. It turns out I don’t actually want an answer to that.”

Peeta laughs, looking completely unflustered, and pats Katniss’ thigh affectionately before turning to her. “Do you know what you want?” he asks, and it takes a second for his words to make sense to her, to seep in. Because, if she understood correctly, then not only is her little sister dating Rye, but she’s living with him, too.

_Do I know what I want_?

She doesn’t know what she’s _allowed_ to want.

“Um… I’m thinking of French toast, maybe?” she says, but she knows she’s just speaking for the sake of it. The thought of eating anything right now makes her feel sick.

She turns to face her sister. Her thoroughly guilty-looking sister. Prim looks like a cat who just swallowed a canary and then belched up a few feathers onto her chin.

“You’re living together,” she says, trying to sound neutral and failing. “That seems… fast.”

Prim fingers the tines of the fork lying in front of her, scrubbing at them with the pad of her thumb as if to polish some invisible smudge off of them. “Well, I mean I _guess_ it is. But we actually started dating about six months ago.” She sounds like a child terrified to tell her mother she's broken a treasured heirloom.

“Six months,” Katniss says. “Six _months_?” She can’t help feel indignant that her sister kept this from her so long. It’s not like they’d had the chance to talk as often as she’d like recently… although _fuck_. Now she knows _why_.

She’s the only family Prim has left, and her sister chose to keep her relationship, her decidedly serious relationship, secret from her.

“Why, Prim?”

The silence that falls over the table is uncomfortable, and, at least in Katniss’ corner, it borders on hostile. Everyone knows what she’s asking; it begs to be asked.

Prim swallows thickly. “Look, Katniss. I didn’t mean to keep anything secret from you… or, at least, not out of spite or anything.”

Katniss shakes her head, not understanding. Or simply not wanting to.

“It’s just that… I know the past several years have been really hard for you with Gale and don’t get me started on…”

“Don’t.” Katniss’ voice is low and even. She isn’t angry, but she doesn’t want Peeta to find out about _him_ from her sister. That should be her call, her choice. And only when she’s good and ready.

She also can’t stand the thought that her little sister, the one she raised after their parents died and who she loves unconditionally, the one she’s always supported and championed, would hide something so important to her out of... pity? It doesn't make sense.

“Y’all had time to decide?” It’s the voice of an angel, or maybe the devil, that interrupts their conversation. The waitress hovers over the table, long sable hair slung over one shoulder and one hip hitched to the side in an attitude of insolence, her short skirt showing off about a mile-and-a-half of leg. She bites on the eraser of her pencil as she waits for someone to answer, and as her teeth clamp down on it Katniss can’t help but notice her incisors are as sharp as fangs. Whereas she doesn’t seem to notice or care that Rye’s arm is slung around Prim, she shoots Katniss a dirty look when she sees where Peeta’s hand rests. She arches an eyebrow and snickers to herself, the sound harsh and grating.

Peeta answers before the waitress does something like rip out someone’s throat. “Yeah… um… I think we’re all set. Ladies first?” When he looks at Katniss she notices there’s something guarded in his expression, some worry that wasn’t there before.

_See_? Katniss wants to shout to the crowded restaurant. _This is why you shouldn’t date in-family. It complicates everything_.

She sighs, trying not to think about how she’s going to have to tell Peeta about David sooner rather than later when she wanted to tell him about it maybe goddamn _never_ , and places her order. The last thing she wanted to do today was dredge up past drama. No. She just wanted a nice breakfast with her boyfriend and then an even nicer brunchtime fuck to top it off.

They go around the table, ordering, and after the waitress stalks off, Prim turns to Peeta, her face overly bright as she tries to change the topic. “So you’re the world-famous PJ Mellark then?”

Peeta’s face flushes at the question, but he smiles pleasantly and looks altogether pleased. “I’m not even famous in my own family,” he demurs. He laughs and slings his arm around Katniss’ shoulders again, drawing her toward him. With her tucked against his body he can’t see the frown on her face or the way her brows knit together in consternation as the conversation goes on.

“Oh, don’t even try giving me that. I’ve heard all about you… Rye’s always bragging about his ‘baby brother.’ It’s just that the way he always talks about you made me think of you as, like, some child prodigy.”

“Hey now,” Rye cautions playfully. “Watch what you say. Can’t have the child prodigy getting a big head, thinking he’s hot shit and all that.”

Prim swats at Rye’s ribs. “Don’t be so bashful.” She looks at Katniss and rolls her eyes. “I don’t know why men have such a hard time expressing their feelings for each other. He’s crazy about his baby brother, and with good reason. I’m sure you’ve heard all about these two.”

Now Rye is the older sibling to look pleased, Katniss notices, as if he’s taking credit for the person that Peeta has become.

“I can see why you got the full scholarship,” Prim tells Peeta sincerely, her voice laced with awe. “Your paintings are extraordinary.”

Wait… _what_?

Katniss pulls away from Peeta far enough to look at him, her eyes assessing every lineament of his face to see how well she really knows it. She’s satisfied to see it’s entirely unchanged, that she can trace every line and pore, but something in her perception of it has shifted.

“You’re a painter?”

She knows that he’s a baker. That he likes to sleep with the windows open, even this late in the fall. She knows he doesn’t take sugar in his tea. That he double-knots his shoelaces and seems to take an hour while doing it. She knows he wears boxers and has a birthmark on his left hip and that he likes to fuck her with his tongue and that after he comes he buries his flushed face in the crook of her neck.

But why didn’t she know that he’s a painter?

He smiles sweetly and nods at the question, not seeming to understand how upset she is that she didn’t know this simple, essential, fundamental thing about him. And that her sister did.

“What do you paint?” she asks. Wanting to know, needing to know all of it.

Across the table, Rye watches her carefully, and she hates it, that feeling of being judged. For being found wanting. Because what kind of girlfriend wouldn’t already know this— that he paints so well and with such passion that he’s going to school for it, that he got a full scholarship for it? Hell, she doesn’t even know what the “J” in his name stands for.

Prim answers before Peeta can, her voice ardent and enthusiastic, oblivious to her sister’s turmoil or Rye’s newfound skepticism. “God, Katniss. _Everything_. His paintings are all over their house… they’re surreal. Shattering trees. Giant, colored butterflies. These gaping pits filled with… like... shiny orange bubbles.”

“They sound sort of dark,” Katniss says, realizing that maybe she doesn’t really know Peeta half as well as she’d like to think. Her boyfriend is a painter. Who enjoys creating, it seems, images straight out of a bad acid trip.

“Not all of them are dark, though. My favorite is the one he has hanging in his room.” Prim raves on, failing to note the pained look on her sister’s face, “It’s, like, this… cave… with rain dripping down like a curtain, and it’s so beautiful. It makes me feel… I don’t know… secluded and safe somehow?”

There’s so much Katniss wants to say, so much she wants to know, that she doesn’t know where to begin. Her stomach aches like someone has kicked her to the ground, pummeling her repeatedly in the gut, demanding her subjection. She starts with something simple, something she should know and that her sister already does. She turns to Peeta and asks, her voice so small and insignificant she’s surprised he can hear her over the corny muzak the diner’s playing. “You live with your brother?”

At this distance, in the morning sunlight, she can count every one of Peeta’s soft freckles. His long, blond eyelashes are hopelessly tangled, impossibly long. She knows his face by heart, every detail, these as well as a hundred others. But she doesn’t know where her boyfriend lives, or with whom. She doesn’t know what his dreams are or why he seems to paint his nightmares.

And, making all of this worse is the colossal elephant squatting in the corner of the room, stinking and panting and desperately reeking of the circus, a dispirited, caged animal: her sister is more a part of his world than she is. She knows Peeta’s brother, and, through him, Peeta’s family, Peeta’s history. It comes so easily to Prim, knowing people, being indispensable to them. It always did. These are the things that don’t come easily to Katniss, if at all. Making people like her. Need her. Want her around.

“Well,” Peeta says, shrugging, “I live with Rye when I’m not in school.” He scrubs at the stubble on his jaw with his hand, seeming to consider whether to add something, and then continues, “I have since I was sixteen.”

When Rye speaks his voice is jocular and light despite the a somber expression in his eerily pale eyes, “See, Katniss, the life of a bachelor got to be too much to handle, and when I’d wasted away to nothing I finally broke down and recruited this fucker to be my personal chef.”

Peeta shoots a crooked smile at his brother. It’s filled with love and gratitude and something like admiration, and when Katniss sees it, she recognizes first-hand every single thing it means about who Rye is to his brother. She knows it because it’s how her sister looks at her.

Except for right now. When Katniss looks over at Prim, she notices a perturbed look on her sister’s face, the unspoken ‘ _don’t you know_?’. Katniss shakes her head and shrugs because no, she doesn’t know why her boyfriend went to live with his older brother at sixteen, although she thinks she could hazard one or two guesses why. And maybe she should know this. And maybe it makes her a totally shit person that she doesn’t.

Katniss is thankful when the food arrives, giving her an excuse to shovel fork after fork in her mouth like a soldier in a mess hall. She takes a back seat in the conversation, alternating between half-heartedly listening to the others chat and wallowing in self-pity. Aside from Peeta’s hand, which persistently remains rooted to her thigh, his thumb drawing absented-minded circles on it as he eats and laughs, no one seems to notice that she’s even there. Which makes her wallow even more. What place does she have, really, at this table? With two brothers who adore each other, a couple who, judging by appearances, know everything there is to know about each other… at least, you know, the basics? And with a sister who doesn't even tell her she’s dating someone— _living_ with someone— and seems to know more about Peeta than she does?

She’s in the middle of a particularly bitter jag of self-pity when she feels Peeta’s body tense up next to hers. It draws her attention back to the conversation instantly.

“You know me. You know I wouldn’t normally ask, Peet, but everyone is going to be there for dinner. Bran and Charlotte and the girls. And I sort of wanted to take the opportunity to tell the whole family at once. You know… this way no one finds out on Facebook or some shit.”

Katniss wants to ask, ‘ _Find out what_?’ But she’s too busy trying to figure out what’s going on with Peeta, why every muscle in his body seems to be pulled taut and to the breaking point.

Peeta shakes his head as he speaks, “Oh, I don’t know. I mean, I’m going to have to work at the store. We open for Black Friday on Thanksgiving now, so I gotta be to the store by five. Dinner would have to be so early, and the traffic getting back into the city could be bad if it’s snowing, and you know that mom wouldn’t want—”

Rye holds his hand up, brooking no argument. “I don’t give a flying fuck what mom wants, Peet. It’s going to be at _our_ house. I’m talking about having the whole family there... It’s really fucking important to me that includes you. So you tell me what I need to do for that to happen. Anything, you name it.”

Peeta makes a sound that’s half groan and half dying animal. His face is pale, his left leg bouncing in agitation. Katniss doesn’t need to know the particulars to know that this is a man who is tortured at the thought of being around someone in his family. For _some_ reason.

She’s not good with words, and even if she were, she wouldn’t know what to say, so she just places her hand over Peeta’s and gently squeezes. When he looks at her, she thinks it’s the face of a hunted man she sees. They’re still looking at each other, reading each other, when Prim speaks again.

“You should come, Peeta,” she says in a persuasive tone. “Besides, Katniss will be there.”

Katniss’ eyes snap over to her sister. She cocks her head as if she hadn’t heard correctly. “Come again now?”

Prim shrugs innocently. “I mean, it’s Thanksgiving, Katniss. Of course you’ll be spending it with me.” When Katniss doesn’t respond right away, Prim continues. “I’m the only family you’ve got. Did you think you wouldn’t be invited to dinner?” She makes a soft dismissive noise with her mouth.

The thought comes to Katniss instantly, the swiftness and certainty of it terrifying her: _but you’re not the only family I have_. Her thumb brushes lightly across the top of Peeta’s hand, and she feels him squeezing her thigh. He exhales heavily and looks at her, and for a second she’s worried that he doesn’t want her there with his family, that he isn’t ready for what that means.

“I’ll go if Katniss does,” he concedes, sounding resigned to it, like the choice has been taken from him. Which it has been, by circumstances and by a blond-haired sprite with an outsize personality and a face you can’t refuse.

“Alright,” Katniss nods, only looking at Peeta when she speaks. “We’ll go together.”

It is quickly decided, then, that in three weeks they’ll be having an early Thanksgiving dinner together at Rye and Prim’s place, with their eldest brother, Bran, his wife and daughters and with Mr. and Mrs. Mellark. Katniss isn’t sure how she should feel about this yet, not until she’s had the chance to speak privately to Peeta, but she has the sense that, in general, whatever Rye wants, Rye gets.

She tries not to think about what that means for her sister.

When the bill arrives a few moments later, Peeta snatches it from the table before Rye can. “I’ve got this,” he says, standing up in one fluid motion.

“Peeta, no I insist, let me grab the check.” Rye holds a hand out expectantly, but Peeta refuses to drop it into his palm.

“I’ll let you grab it next time,” he offers with a chuckle, his expression finally relaxing. “And I’ll make sure we go to a steakhouse.”

He doesn’t wait for Rye to respond before he saunters over to the cash register by the front door. Katniss’ eyes follow him as he goes, unabashedly raking over him. She loves to watch him walk, how he holds his head up high but without any trace of arrogance. His tread is heavy and deliberate; she thinks it would make him look like he owned any place he happened to be in.

She only wrests her eyes from him when Prim nudges Rye out of the booth to use the bathroom. “Need to use the girls’ room too?” Prim looks expectantly at Katniss because, of course, all women go to the bathroom in pairs.

Except for this woman. “Nah, I’m good,” Katniss says despite her reluctance to be left alone with the man sitting across the table, the man who’s staring at her like he’s holding a hot coal in his bare hand that he’d like to lob her way.

“Of course you are,” Prim grouses good-naturedly and walks away.

She hasn’t gone five steps when Rye begins to talk. He leans toward Katniss, carefully resting his elbows on the table to dodge the rings of condensation left from their water glasses.

“I hope you don't think I'm rude.”

“No—” Katniss begins, but Rye doesn’t wait for her reply because they both know he doesn’t really care if she does.

“It's just…” he says, searching for the exact words, “I’d ask how you met and how long it's been going on, but it's pretty obvious to me that you're the… _girl_ … from the store that Peet’s been into. And, based off the fact you don't seem to know shit about him, I’d say it hasn't been going on very long.”

They both look over at Peeta, who’s fishing his wallet out of his back pocket and making it his personal mission to try to get the fanged waitress to smile. The look on her face is closer to a snarl, but Peeta doesn’t seem to notice or care. He yammers on, grinning at her, convincing her of something, _anything_ , because that’s what Peeta does.

Rye is still looking at his brother when he continues to speak. “Look, I'm gonna be straight with you because you seem like a straight shooter.” His eyes meet hers, all former traces of levity and carelessness so thoroughly obliterated they might well have never existed at all. Katniss thinks that this must be the real Rye; the brash and light-hearted man is a lie, a mask he carries to protect the ones he loves.

And that’s decidedly not her.

“I know what you've done for Prim,” he says, “how you take care of her and love her and would, I’m sure, kill for her and… it's like for me and Peet. He hasn't had the easiest life, okay? And at some point I'm sure he's gonna tell you about it.”

He clears his throat and taps his index finger on the table aggravatedly. When he speaks again his voice is so low it sounds like the rumble of a distant engine, an oiled machine that sparks and grinds and protests and drives its fucking point home. “But if you hurt him, Katniss, if this is just some kind of game for you that you get tired of playing, and you _hurt_ him… We’re gonna have some real problems, me and you.”

_Finally_ , Katniss thinks. _We’ve made it to the point_. She leans toward Rye and matches his posture. Her gray eyes are fierce, her face is unflinching. She smiles at him— or maybe she sneers— and she wishes she had fangs. There’s not much to say. Except: “ _Same_.”

He gives her a smug look, seeming to enjoy her ferocity. “I wouldn't expect anything less from you.” Rye chances a look over his shoulder toward the bathroom, and when he sees that Prim is nowhere in sight, he adds, “But don't worry, big sis. I'm gonna be asking Prim to marry me.”

“Does she know?”

“Of course she does.”

“When?”

“While we’re here in the city. Whenever it feels right.” He gives a small shrug, clearly undecided on the matter.

The desperation rises in her, extending from her gut and coursing through her limbs, making them tremble. “So soon? What's the rush?”

Another shrug, another noncommittal gesture used to describe a lifelong commitment. “Throwing my back out made me realize I'm not getting any younger. Might as well.”

It doesn't make the most compelling argument, this motive born out of pragmatism and resignation.

Rye looks at his brother as he pockets his change and begins to walk back toward the table. “What I worry about in your situation, Katniss, is that you know you're not getting any younger either. And at what point are you gonna try to rush Peet into something he might not be ready for?”

Marriage. Kids. It was never part of her plan. “No, that's not for me,” she tells him.

“No?” Rye smirks. “Not even seeing all your friends getting married and starting families?”

She’s lucky, she supposes, that only one of her friends has gotten married and had a baby. And they aren’t friends anymore. It’s not like she has family pressuring her either. “No,” she repeats, “that’s not for me.”

On Peeta’s path back through the crowded dining room he pauses to let a family pass. A mother, holding the hand of a young girl who isn’t walking so much as skipping, traipsing through the restaurant. And a father, who holds a heavy car carrier in his hand, a sleeping infant nestled among the fabric. He grins as he watches them walk by.

Rye watches his brother carefully. Well,” he says, “the thing is that, in ten years, when he’s good and ready, it _is_ gonna be for Peet. You should fucking see him with our nieces. I mean, look at him _now_. So it sounds to me like you’ve got a fundamental problem. It’s what happens when the woman is much older— she either rushes the guy into settling down too soon, or she rules it out altogether. And either way, the choice is made for him. What I think, since we’re being honest, is that maybe you’re having too good a time to care about the fact that you’re playing games with someone’s future.”

“And you’re saying that Peeta deserves better,” she whispers, knowing it’s true.

Peeta walks toward them, a crooked smile crawling onto his face as his eyes meet hers.

Rye sighs and leans back against the booth. “No, Katniss. I’m saying he deserves the best.”

**************************

Katniss had been quiet the entire morning, ever since she found out that her sister is dating his brother, and— granted— that’s really weird, but not weird enough to act like she’s being gnawed alive and ripped to pieces from the inside out. So, when they reach Katniss’ front stoop and Rye asks if they’re free to kick around the city with them for a while today, Peeta lies and says he has to go to class. He doesn’t actually— today’s a rare day when the stars aligned and somehow he doesn’t have to work at the store or head over to campus, but he needs to shed an extraneous Mellark and Everdeen if he’s going to get Katniss to fess up about what’s eating at her. And even then, sometimes with her it takes a bit of doing.

He loves his brother, and despite the crap Rye pulled about Thanksgiving, it had been a great surprise seeing him today. But when Peeta looks over at Katniss and sees her normally olive skin looking ashen, her gray eyes withdrawn and pensive, any pang of guilt he might feel about lying is overwhelmed by something _more_.

Rye looks disappointed that they’re not free, but after they promise to meet up with them in a couple days for dinner and a movie, he gives a nod of acceptance, shakes Katniss’ hand— which is weirdly formal for him— and then walks off hand-in-hand with Prim.

Peeta’s watching them walk away, lost in his own thoughts, when he feels Katniss’ fingers wind their way through his. Her touch is gentle, tentative. He looks down at her and smiles because he already knows she’s asking him a question.

“Yeah?” he says, relieved to see the spark in her eyes.

“Will you show me some of your paintings sometime?” She asks the question and it sounds like the jetliner flying overhead, the pigeons cooing and trilling, the late fall leaves skittering across the craggy pavement. It fills the air and becomes part of the city, part of the air he breathes and everything he sees and knows.

“You want to see my paintings?”

She nods and smiles, looking sheepish to admit it.

And he’s been buried inside of her— hopes to be buried inside of her again in under five minutes, if he can help it— but confessing this to him seems to cost her something. He leans down and brushes his lips lightly to hers. “I’d love to show you,” he tells her, soaking in the sight of her smile. “They’re kind of personal,” he admits, frowning as he thinks about his latest work. He drags his free hand through his hair. “And shit… I…. kind of made a few that are about you.”

Her eyes grow wide as saucers. “You did?”

He grins and drags her toward him, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and leaning down to bury his face in her neck. It’s easier to tell her this way. But it’s also _better_. “I did,” he confesses, whispering into her ear. “And they’re maybe sort of _kind of_ sexual in nature.”

She pulls back enough to look up at him, and although her jaw hangs slack in shock, her eyes sparkle mischievously. “What do you mean maybe sort of _kind of_ sexual?”

He traces the shell of her ear lightly and grins boyishly down at her. “Well, you are familiar with the works of Georgia O’Keeffe, right?”

She punches his stomach lightly and acts galled, but the blush creeping onto her cheeks betrays her. “You didn’t! You painted my…” she looks around, making sure no one is listening, which of course no one is, and then hisses, “...as a _flower_?”

He laughs, and at the sound she laughs too, covering her mouth with one hand like she ought to be ashamed. He pulls her hand away from her mouth and holds it tightly. Because he doesn’t ever want her to be ashamed and because there’s almost nothing he loves more in the world than to make this girl smile.

He pulls her in and paints his words across her temple. “I painted your pussy as a flower because it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

She buries her face in his chest, and he holds her tightly to him, laughing at her reaction. “Oh my god, Peeta Mellark!”

“I’d love to have you say that again, but this time with me between your legs.” He’s laughing, and she’s laughing too, and in the late autumn sunshine, wrapped in each other’s arms, he’s thankful he knows what love feels like.

Katniss swats at him again, and he easily catches the punch, kissing her knuckles. “C’mon,” he says, his voice raspy and low. “Let’s go inside. There’s something I’ve been wanting to do that involves your door.”

“My door?” she looks up her front stoop at the door that’s painted a garish shade of red. Peeta thinks she must have been going for a warm maroon, but this shade is clownish and jarring, and he kind of loves it for that.

“Well, against that door, anyway,” he says, and when Katniss looks at him, her eyes are dark, her pupils fat, from the understanding of what he wants to do.

He’s going to fuck her senseless against that front door to show her that life can be good, can be so blissfully, inexpressibly good, before he has to show her what she’s asked of him. She wants to know everything about him, and that has to include his past. And hers, too. It’s time they’ve talked.

But the past is going to wait, a little while at least.

Now isn’t the time for talking.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading and reviewing. Please be aware that I wrote this in the dead of night while the ideas were flowing. I've tried to be as thorough as humanly possible, but I'm only human <3 
> 
> This story wouldn't be as amazing as it is without my co-authors! They truly are the best thing since sliced bread. Love you girls.
> 
> Please also be aware that this chapter tackles some heavy subjects that involve child abuse. 
> 
>  
> 
> By Everylark

The tendrils of dawn’s light pour through the curtains. The light cuts a line across the smoothness of Katniss’s bare skin as she sleeps. Peeta lays awake staring at the ceiling. Sleep had not come easily to him as he knew the conversations that needed to happen today. While his body is fully sated after their romp against the door, his mind is a mess of emotions. He releases a large sigh and Katniss’s body stretches as she begins to awake.

 

“Good Morning beautiful.” Katniss opens one eye to see Peeta’s blue ones staring at her. His tongue is wetting his lips which are raw and cracked. His voice is husky and he looks exhausted. She reaches up to run her fingers over the dark bags under his eyes and takes a deep breathe in.

 

“You didn’t sleep.” Katniss holds her breath in awaiting his answer. She gulps the air as she can feel the tension deep in her lungs.

 

“I have so much I have to tell you. I should have told you earlier, but it isn’t an easy subject to discuss.” Peeta runs his fingers through his mess of hair. Katniss can easily read the pain and hesitation in his eyes. There is so much she wants to ask him, so many questions that need to be answered however she isn’t quite sure she is ready for the emotional rollercoaster this is sure to be. Emotions aren’t her forte. They make her feel uncomfortable and want to run. Actually right now she is thinking about how many ways she can get out of this bed and into the shower. Her thoughts are quickly interrupted. “Katniss. Stay in the bed. You know we have to do this.” This shocks her momentarily. He knows her so well, knows her instinct is to flee. “If once I go through all of this, you want to leave. I’ll let you go. No questions asked. I’ll walk away.” Katniss hears how his voice cracks a bit on the last words out of his mouth.

 

She clears her throat. “Ok. You can start with explaining why your brother was such an asshole to me. I get the overprotective big brother thing, but seriously Peeta?” Her walls went up. He could see with every word out of her mouth that she was going to go into protective mode. Protective mode was better than running mode.

 

“Uh.” Peeta’s voice cracks again. “My mother is not a very nice person. As you can see, there is a 12 year gap between Rye and me. I was a mistake. My father didn’t want her to have an abortion, so she gave birth to me.” Peeta takes a minute to take a deep breath in. Katniss reaches over to stroke small circles on his arm willing him to continue. “She didn’t want me. She wanted her freedom. I held her back. At first it started with smacks to the head while no one else was looking. Always in conjunction with her telling me how useless I was, or how she didn’t even want me.” Peeta’s hands run across his face and into his hair. Katniss notices how he tugs a little at the roots, and reaches up to soothe him.

 

“I’m not running you see.” She tries to crack a smile to relieve some of the sadness.

 

“Eventually it turned into burns. Burns with the iron, with a hot pan, or punches all where they could be covered with clothing. Once Rye caught her hitting me, he started getting in front of me. I was four the first time he hit her back. He was sixteen.” The gasp escaped Katniss’s mouth without warning. Small crystal tears were forming in the corners of her eyes.

 

“Where was your father?” Katniss squeaks out on a breath. While her childhood was not ideal either, neither she nor Prim had ever been physically abused. The thought of small blonde Peeta being hit or burnt makes the tears threaten to fall faster.

 

Peeta lets out a sigh. “My dad is a wonderful, kind man. He was however, completely complacent in everything. Not once did he step in and make it better. He turned a blind eye to everything until the one day he couldn’t anymore.” Peeta’s shoulders rounded over more and more as he spoke. Katniss could see how the weight of this story caused him physical pain. This was more than any one human should ever have to deal with. She moves her hands from his arm up to cup his face and lays a gentle kiss on his nose. “When Rye turned 18 everyone expected him to go off to college and wrestle. See, he was an all star wrestler in high school. He had schools crawling all over themselves to enroll him. He turned every single school down. Why? Because he was afraid to leave me. Rye stayed home and worked at the bakery, to protect me.” The realization of what Rye had given up for Peeta hit Katniss like a sack of bricks. Katniss knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would have done exactly the same thing if it had been for Prim. Her first impressions of Rye were wrong. Fuck.

 

“Oh God Peeta.” Katniss exhales.

 

“It gets worse. When I was 16, we had a particularly bad day at the bakery. I had dropped a cake, and everything was just out of control.” Peeta takes a minute to compose himself. “I was standing at the top of the basement stairs with her screaming behind me. Rye was at the bottom of the stairs stacking flour. All of a sudden I felt two hands in the back of my shoulders and she pushed. If Rye hadn’t been at the bottom of the stairs Katniss, I would have hit concrete. As it was, my leg was broken, and so was my arm. I had a nasty concussion and was hospitalized for a week. Rye called the police that day and I was removed from the house. Rye petitioned the courts for custody and he became my legal guardian.”

 

“Holy shit.” Tears were pouring down Katniss’s face at this point. She could see that Peeta was trying to hold his at bay, but they were shimmering right at the bottom of each eye.

 

“So Katniss, you need to understand that Rye's cold protectiveness was built one slap, one burn, one insult at a time. The walls he built to protect himself also protected me. I get the judgement, I do. However, I've been behind that wall." The words catch in his throat and the tears that had been precariously dancing on the edge of Peeta's eyes finally spill over. Katniss reaches her hand to wipe the wet tracks off his face. Her delicate fingers dancing across his cheeks in such an intimate gesture finally give him the power to continue. "I'm only alive because his walls went in front of me. I can't ever judge him for that. I need you to not judge him for that. I can only feel eternally grateful that he's given me the opportunity to take another breath. Those breaths gave me the opportunity to be with you.” Katniss continues to cup his cheeks and wipe the tears as they fall. She can feel her tears falling as fast and as furious as his were.

 

“Where was your oldest brother at this point?” Katniss still has so many questions floating around her in head. She feels the need to make sure every dot gets connected.

 

“Bran had just married. He was out of the house and pretty oblivious. Bran was and I guess still is their golden child. He never once faced anything the Rye and I did. He’s a bit removed from everything.” Peeta cracks a small smile for the first time all morning. “He’s has a fabulous wife and kids and he’s happy. It’s nice to see him so settled. He came around a lot more after Rye won custody, but he’s got his own life to live.”

 

“Wow Peeta. Just wow. Can I just ask one more question?’ Katniss looks into his eyes pleadingly.

 

“Of course Katniss. I want you to know everything. I don’t want there to be any more secrets between us anymore.” Peeta breathes out. “I’ll answer anything I can.”

 

“Why the fuck do you still talk to your parents?” Katniss gulps when she realizes that it came out a bit more forcefully than she intended.

 

“This is where it gets complicated. Because Rye didn’t go to college, the only thing he has is the bakery. His entire livelihood is wrapped up in the bakery. The bakery will be his once my parents retire. So he continues to work there, and I continue to see them at holidays. It’s the least I can do for Rye. He deserves the bakery Katniss, it’s all he has.” Peeta’s voice breaks again with the emotion behind his words. Katniss can see the sense of debt that Peeta is carrying on his shoulders.

 

“Peeta, Rye did that all for you because he loves you. That’s what we do for our siblings. You need to let go of the guilt. He would want that for you. Your mom doesn’t hit Rye anymore does she?”

 

“No. She’s not at the bakery at all. She has cancer. It’s just my Dad and Rye now. We just deal with her at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Honestly, she just bitches now. I can tune her out as can everyone else. In the end, it all turned out for the best. Rye is amazing. I’m working on forgiving her. I need to move on with my life.” Peeta reaches out for Katniss and she tucks her body into his nook. That space between his neck and his shoulders was made for her. She always felt so safe and warm there. His hand comes up to brush in her hair and she closes her eyes. “It’s all lead me here. Here is where I want to be.” His lips graze across her hair and she takes a deep breath. “So now’s the time when I tell you that I will let you go. I can’t look at you while I say this, but here goes. If this is all too much for you, I understand. If you can’t do this, if you want out, I’ll go quietly. I won’t be happy about it, but I’ll do it. Honestly Katniss, I feel like we really have something here. Something that could be really good. But I want you to be on my page and if you want to run, I won’t follow.” Katniss can hear the sadness in his voice, but she can also hear his determination. He would walk away from her. He would let her go if she couldn’t handle this. He would put her needs first. The realization strikes her right in the heart.

 

No one had ever put her first. She had always been the one to put people first. Her entire life had revolved around making sure Prim’s needs came first. If she just let herself trust, just this once, he would put her first. The decision came easier to Katniss than she expected. The words that fly out of her mouth are true and sincere.

 

“I could fall for you Peeta Mellark. As terrifying as that is for me, I’m not running. I don’t want to let you go. I’m not sure where this will lead us but for this moment right now, I don’t want to go anywhere.” Katniss’s lips graze his neck and she can feel the breath he was holding release through his mouth.

 

In a slick practiced move, Peeta flips over so he is on top of Katniss and looking directly in her eyes. His hands grasp her hair and he dips his head to kiss her lips ever so softly. His eyes are filled with love and heat, and Katniss waits for the terror to creep up her neck. When the feeling never comes, all she is left with is a warmth and need for this man.

 

“I’m already falling for you Katniss Everdeen. We will take this one day at a time.” His lips meet hers again in a slow passionate kiss. Releasing her lips, he looks deep into her eyes. She can see a bit of a smirk dancing across his lips. “I guess we should probably talk about Thanksgiving.”

 

 

 

 


	19. Chapter Nineteen

The unseasonably cool November air stings Katniss's cheeks as she walks slowly to the door. 

 

"You should probably smile. This isn't a funeral march." Peeta's words — while playful — also hold an edge of anxiety. 

 

Today was the day. 

 

Thanksgiving. Otherwise known as — Fucksgiving — but Katniss was only calling it that in her head, or quietly mumbling it under her breath. Twelve hundred times a day.

 

Arms laden with freshly baked pies and cakes, Katniss couldn't even reach out to hold his hand and gain some confidence, some traction. Something. She wants to feel grounded in something. Anything. Prim had called the night before to reassure Katniss that everything would be fine, but even that hadn't helped. She just couldn't shake the feeling that this was going to be very, very bad. 

Just as Peeta steps up to the large imposing door, it swings open. The blonde head of Rye peeks out and he extends his arms to help gather some of the baked goods. "Damn Peet, you do know we are a family of bakers right?" Peeta just shrugs his arms and turns around to help Katniss with the rest of the items. Rye turns around and disappears deep into the house. 

 

Katniss stands still, arms feeling empty with lack of food, and lack of things to do. Her feet refuse to move even though she wills them too. Even they know that this is a very-bad-no-good-absolutely-fucking-awful idea. Peeta turns around and gives her a look. It's the look that says 'knock it off and move your fucking feet before I carry you.' 

 

One foot moves and then the next, as they slowly carry her up the stairs and into the house. 

 

Katniss is instantly met with the sounds and smells of one hell of a busy house. There's small kids running everywhere, their feet making more noise than a herd of elephants. She can hear the TV playing the football game in the background as loud very male voices argue the calls. She can smell the cooking turkey and all the accouterments that go with it. 

 

And she wonders if they can smell her fear. Fuck, even she can smell it. 

 

Before she knows it, Peeta is back at her side and he grabs her hand. That small piece of comfort, her lifeline, gives her the ability to move forward. She takes a deep breath. She can do this. This is nothing. Inside this house is Prim, the one person she loves more than anything. She wills her brain to focus on that and allows Peeta to navigate her through the house. 

 

"Hey, I'm Bran. You must be Katniss." A large blonde man stands in front of Katniss. She shakes her head and wonders if she had hopped into a Delorean and found herself 20 years in the future. This man was the spitting image of Peeta, only older. And she's not gonna lie - it's not a bad scene. If that's what Peeta's going to look like in 20 years, she's down. 

 

"It's so nice to meet you." The words come out of her mouth politely and she gives herself a small pat on the back for not running and hiding. 

 

"Come on in and meet everyone else. They are all gathered in the kitchen." They follow Bran down the hallway and Katniss grasps Peeta's hand like her life depends on it. And maybe it does. 

 

The scene in the kitchen is straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. If only there were thought bubbles in Norman Rockwell paintings. She suspects this one would have one coming out of Peeta's mother that said "the stick up my ass goes straight to my brain." Peeta's mother is stiring something at the stove. She holds herself ram-rod straight and there's an air around here that clearly reads she's in charge. 

 

"This is my wife..." Katniss reaches her hand out to grasp the small woman's hand just as Peeta's mother whirls around, spoon in hand. 

 

"Oh this must be Peeta's new whore." 

 


	20. Fucksgiving: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bullseye is, as always, unbetaed, unplanned, and totally for funsies. We hope you enjoy the ride with us! <3

“Try not to take it personally,” Mrs. Mellark says with a child-eating smirk, “but I’m not going to bother remembering your name.” The bony, brittle-looking woman gives Katniss a once-over before turning back around to the stove, talking as she stirs whatever witches’ brew she’s been working on—a gravy, most likely made out of unicorn tears and the crushed hearts of puppies. Her voice is low and raspy, each note dipped and stained with nicotine and smoke. “You see, he’s been bringing... _girls_... like you home since he was thirteen. Usually through the bedroom window.” She waves dismissively over her shoulder, a gesture as casual and final as a snake swallowing the hind legs of a rabbit. “You won’t make it to next Thanksgiving.”

Humiliation and fury wash over Katniss, engulfing her like a forest fire. She burns. _Burns_.

“The same could be said for you,” she fires back before she can stop herself.

 _Well, there goes my shot at Miss Congeniality_.

While the rest of the family stands around with stricken faces, the beloved matriarch of the Mellark family laughs, the husky sound morphing into a soupy cough. Whatever cancer the woman has, it’s eating her by the lungs too. “At least you’ve got some fight in you,” she says, then nods toward Peeta, who is standing, speechless and pale, his jaw clenched and hands bawled into fists at his side. “Unlike _that_ one.”

At this exchange of words, there is a massive exodus from the kitchen that reminds Katniss of the opening credits to _The Simpsons_ … the assembled family members scramble away on legs that move so fast it’s hard to see them at all. They’re a blur of panic, desperate to go anywhere but here.

An older man who is clearly Peeta’s father disappears through a swinging door on the opposite side of the room, his blue eyes wide and face blanched like this is the moment he’s realized he is married to a literal monster. _Coward_. A couple women who look to be about Katniss’ age, both holding infants in their arms, shoot knowing looks at each other and each take one side of a crudite platter as they carry it out to the living room together. And Bran’s wife, whose name Katniss can’t recall through the red-tinted haze of her fury, grabs a bowl of party mix from the counter and scurries out of the kitchen, muttering a half-assed excuse under her breath about wanting to see if the halftime show has already started. But really, Katniss thinks uncharitably, the woman bolts because she’s determined to stick her head right back in the fucking sand. Like the rest of them. Like they’ve always done. Allowing Mrs. Mellark to say and do whatever she wants, which is to torment her youngest son with impunity.

From out in the hallway, Katniss hears a small voice ask, “Mommy, what’s a whore?”

“Mom,” Bran pleads, “can you play nice for one day? And please... watch what you say around the kids. They sponge up everything, and then they turn around and take that shit right into school with them.”

“Uh-oh,” another small voice says from the doorway, this time coming from a girl with dark brown eyes and fine raven-black hair pulled into pigtails. “Gammy, Daddy just said ‘shit!’”

Bran groans in dismay. “See what I’m talking about? These kids are like the CIA. They hear everything.” He lopes over to his daughter, giving Peeta’s back a quick thwack on the way, and swoops her up as if she weighs nothing at all. “C’mon, petunia, let’s go watch TV with Mommy and all the cousins.” He shoots a look back over his shoulder and adds, “PJ, Katniss, you’re welcome to join us. There’s, ah, plenty of room on the couch. And folding chairs, if not.”

That leaves just the three of them in the kitchen—Rye and Prim, the absentee hosts, off doing god-knows-what—and the silence settles in among them, a poisonous, venomous thing, like a toxic fog smothering them.

Peeta reaches over and takes Katniss’ hand—whether it’s to anchor her there or to anchor himself, she can’t be sure. His skin is cold and clammy, and he squeezes her fingers in what she thinks is meant to be a reassuring way but feels more like a plea.

“Mother,” Peeta says through gritted teeth, his jaw grinding on the word. “This is my girlfriend. _Katniss_.”

Mrs. Mellark snorts, speaking to the gravy instead of her son. “Twice a year. That’s how often I see you.” She punctuates her words with the spoon she uses to stir, a wooden _thunk thunk_ that rings loudly in the silence against the side of the saucepan. “Two. Times. Thanksgiving, where we are meant to give thanks for the blessing of _family_.” She says the last word like it’s been dredged in lemon juice, impossibly sour to taste. “And Christmas Day, when we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior. You have to endure your mother two times a year, and you decide to bring your latest _lady_ friend, some whore you’re sleeping with, because you’re not man enough to stand on your own and face your family—face _me_. Because you’re an ungrateful little shit who should never have been born.” She throws down the spoon in a fit of temper, gravy slopping off of it and onto the countertop, and whirls around to face Peeta.

Her eyes are a deep blue, two kernels of fire that burn brighter and hotter than any inferno. “You ruin everything, Peeta. _Everything_. There isn’t a thing that doesn’t turn to _shit_ at your touch. You ruined my life the minute you came squalling in this world— no, before that... from the minute I found out I was having you—and now, when I have months left— _months_ —you’ve decided to ruin my last holidays too, by bringing one of your sluts along with you as part of some grand vendetta against me.” She scoffs and crosses her arms against her chest, making herself a fortress, or the husk of one. She looks like the ruins of a castle, crumbling bricks tumbling down from the weight of existence, but nevertheless grand and imposing on the horizon. “Don’t pull another stunt like this next month.”

“First of all,” Peeta retorts, his cheeks flushing scarlet in anger, “this isn’t your house. You don’t get to decide who I invite into it. This is my house. Mine. And secondly—”

“Pssht,” his mother cuts him off bitterly. “You’ve never paid a bill in your life. This house belongs to your brother, who’s paid all your dues for you. You sit high and mighty in your dorm room—or wherever it is you live—and act like the world belongs to you, having done nothing to deserve any of it. I guess that’s my fault, for spoiling you, for not doing a good enough job teaching you any values.”

Peeta ignores her barbs and continues in an eerily calm voice, “And secondly, if you _ever_ refer to Katniss again as a—”

“Well, hello!” Prim’s familiar voice crows from behind them as she breezes into the kitchen. “You guys made it!” Her arms wrap around Katniss’s neck, pulling her in for a hug, and then she moves onto Peeta in the blink of an eye, a pint-sized tornado whirling through the kitchen. “Thank you so much for making the drive… I know you have to work tonight, Peeta, but it means so much to us that you’re here.” Her eyes look a little panicked, her smile a bit desperate, and it makes Katniss wonder how much of the conversation her sister happened to overhear.

Rye strolls in behind her and leans a shoulder against the threshold, his hands tucked casually in his pockets but a wary look on his face as he notices the way Peeta and his mother are standing. Like two boxers, shoulders hunched, waiting to take the next jab.

“Everything alright in here?” he asks.

“Just peachy,” Peeta says in a clipped voice.

“I can see that.” Rye pushes off the doorway and nods toward Katniss and Peeta. “Why don’t you two head into the living room with everyone else. I’ll take care of things in here.”

“Some things never change,” Mrs. Mellark scoffs under her breath, turning the gas to the burner off with a savage flick of her wrist.

Katniss doesn’t need to be told twice. She didn’t need to be told once, for that matter, but she wasn’t going to leave Peeta alone, to be ripped apart by the fangs of that—that—bitch. With Peeta’s hand still entwined with hers in a death grip, she leads him out of the kitchen, blindly leading him… where, she doesn’t know. Away. Away from the monster who calls herself his mother, away from the impotent father who sees everything and does nothing, away from the apathetic cousins and the brothers who can’t save him, and away from the prying eyes of the world.

Alone. She needs to be alone with him somewhere.

When she spots the staircase by the front door, she takes the stairs, feet silently shuffling over the ancient shag carpet covering them. At the top, she reaches for the knob of the first door on the right, stumbling into the darkened room, Peeta close behind her.

He lets go of her hand and sinks onto the foot of the bed in front of them, his elbows perched on his knees, his hands dangling uselessly between his legs. His shoulders sag, looking like two pitiful lumps of snow melting under the punishing rays of the sun.

Defeat. He is the portrait of defeat, and in his pain Katniss can see the boy he used to be—and the man he’s become because of it. A good one. Gentle and compassionate and strong. And, improbably, _hers_.

She closes the door behind her, not giving a flying fuck whose room they’re in and whether or not they’re being rude by hiding up here. She doesn’t owe anyone a fucking thing, except the man in front of her.

“I’m so sorry, Katniss,” Peeta murmurs, burying his face in his hands like he can’t bear to look at her. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come today. I thought I’d try to make things as easy as possible for Rye by putting in the face time, but I didn’t realize she’d come after you like that..."

She walks up to him, stepping between his legs, and cups her hands around the back of his head so she can thread her fingers through his hair and massage his scalp. He buries his forehead against her abdomen, his warm breath seeping into the fabric of her pants, warming her skin beneath. A shiver travels through her—that familiar, aching need tugs at her, from a place low in her belly—but she pushes the feeling aside, hushes it, promises it there will be another day and time for it.

“It’s okay,” she tells him softly.

What else can she say? It’s not okay. There’s nothing okay about any of this, but that’s not Peeta’s fault. Forget her own humiliation—she’s been called worse in her life from others who are nothing to her. And after all, being called a whore by bitter, cancerous women is as inevitable to a woman as bleeding every month. But the things Mrs. Mellark said to him… as a mother...

“Peeta, none of what she said—” She looks around the room, searching for the words that will peel away the filth his mother just poured upon him, dousing on him like gasoline right as she struck a match. “None of what she said is _real_.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

His words are so quiet she can barely hear them, but she feels them in her bones.

“Well... do you think I’m a whore?”

“No. Of course not.” He pushes away, his eyes locking on hers, his expression so fierce and wrathful he looks like he could blot out the entire world—if he were that sort of man, a lesser man, the kind who lobs bombs and only asks questions about the ethics of it after the fact. “Are you fucking kidding me? I love you. What we do—what we have—it’s a good thing. A perfect thing... I mean… You are...” He exhales as his words fail him, the fire dying out in his eyes as the sadness washes over him again. He drops his head back into his hands. “I hate her for so many things. But saying that to you—about you—I think I hate her the most for that.”

He’s never told her before that he loves her—never directly, never with words—and Katniss smiles sadly, hating that she had to hear it today, like this. She glosses over it, hoping that the next time he says it he’ll believe it to be the first time.

“She only said that to hurt you… to hurt you using me. But we know it’s a lie. Like everything else out of her mouth,” Katniss says, sinking down to her knees onto the floor to make Peeta meet her eye. Prying his hands away from his face, she clutches onto them tightly. “You’re good. And kind. You’re one of the most talented people I’ve ever met. You…” She forces herself to say it, even though every part of her screams out of habit to hold it back, to shut her heart away to keep herself safe, “You make everything you touch better. Especially me.”

Something softens in his eyes at her words, and he leans down, brushing his lips lightly against hers, a not-quite-a-kiss that is somehow so much more intimate than if he’d leaned in and stolen her breath with his tongue.

“I meant it,” he murmurs, his lips tickling her cheek and jaw as his mouth skates across them.

“Meant what?”

“That I love you.”

She pulls back far enough to look at him, to see how he’s doing and what he’s feeling in this moment.

Happy. Despite it all, he looks happy.

One of the corners of her mouth ticks upward in a small smile. “I know.”

Peeta grins back at her. “Okay, Han Solo. Have it your way.” Reaching down, he hauls her up by her armpits, hoisting her onto his lap and wrapping his arms around her waist, burying his face in the valley between her breasts.

In the middle of hell there is sometimes a sliver of heaven to be found. And it is like this, straddling Peeta, holding him tightly to her chest, running her fingers through the waves of his hair, that they find theirs.

As Peeta runs his hands down the length of her back in long, soothing strokes, Katniss looks over his shoulder at the room they’re in. The vertical blinds are drawn and the room is dark, but above the dresser there is a painting of a cave. She remembers Prim telling her about it at the diner, but her sister’s description did it a disservice. It isn’t just beautiful. Somehow Peeta was able to breathe his very soul into the painting—the cave is dark and deep, the curtain of water cascading over its entrance pure, the light hitting each droplet unexpected in its brilliance and ever-changing constancy. The stone of the cave is ancient, the moss and ferns clinging to it tenacious, and all of it somehow reminds her of him.

“Where are we?” she asks, even though she knows what the answer will be. Just to give him something safe to talk about.

“My bedroom,” he murmurs, his face still buried against her chest. Through her shirt, his mouth grabs playfully onto one of her bra’s cups, and he pulls at it, releasing it so it snaps against her skin.

“It’s a good painting,” she says with a smirk, “even if it’s not my vagina as a flower.”

Peeta laughs, his shoulders shaking the both of them. “The next time I come back home I’ll have to remedy that. Consider the cave painting a goner.”

“In that case, can I have it?”

He looks up at her so openly and sweetly her heart breaks a little for him. “You can have whatever you want.”

She’s not good at openness or sweetness, not like him, but she knows that they’re going to have to go back downstairs and that he could use a little to offset the bitterness of whatever comes next. So she swallows, her mouth going dry, her heart racing several beats faster, and says, “I already have everything I want.”

Confessions come at a cost, each admission creating a tiny knick on her heart, a paper cut-sized gash that causes the blood to seep and leak outward into her chest, threatening to drown her. They make her weaker, more vulnerable, opening her up bit by bit, and she has to trust that Peeta won’t hurt her.

But confessions come with a reward too, and the smile Peeta gives her as he lies back, pulling her with him and tucking her into the crook of his arm so that she’s half-draped across him, is worth the cost. Beyond worth it. She threads her fingers through his, resting their entwined hands across his stomach, and she listens to the beating of his heart beneath her ear. It lulls her, soothes her, and she is overwhelmed with gratitude for it—grateful that, although he came into the world ten years later than he could have, he _did_ come into this world, and exists with her in this place. Now.

A hesitant knocking at the door, no more than the sound of fingers thrumming against the wood, interrupts her thoughts.

“Come in,” Peeta says without moving a muscle, even though Katniss’ body goes rigid, her spine locking up like an anxious cat.

“Ah, hey,” Rye says from the doorway, one hand still clutching the doorknob. “Sorry to interrupt… whatever it is you’re doing... but dinner’s ready whenever you guys are.” He backs out, closing the door as he leaves, but before the door snicks shut Rye shoots her what looks an awful lot like a fraction of a smile.

Whatever he saw, she passed a test she hadn’t known she was taking.

“I’m really sorry about today,” Peeta says, pulling her in more closely to him. “Coming here was something I had to do for Rye. My mom… she threatens him sometimes, saying she’ll sell the bakery. All the time, actually. Whenever she doesn’t get her way, she holds that over his head as blackmail. They’re empty threats, I think, but I know she’ll never fully forgive him for what he did for me. She doesn't have it in her. So I try not to make things worse… but I’m sorry for putting you in this situation.”

“Don’t be.” Katniss shrugs. “I’d be here anyway because of Prim.” She pushes up and looks down at him, the ghost of a smile on her face. “I’m just thankful… since we’re counting our blessings and all… that we didn’t meet like this. Could you imagine?” She glances ruefully at the door, knowing they need to face whatever is waiting for them downstairs. Sitting up, she reaches out for his hand. “What do you say… are you ready to head down there?”

Peeta takes her hand in his and sits up, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Together?”

“Together,” she promises.

As if she would have it any other way. 


End file.
